For My Sister Playing Her Chopin Ballade

[to Sharon, the sister of Music]

as if chandeliers were weeping, your ballade.
I remember that feeling in our Grandmother's studio:
your shimmering piano and the happiness that if

I asked you, you would play it again
all that mimosa fond and fronded summer.
and you drank Cokes incessantly

and never stopped practicing.
now you are far, or seem to be-
but I kept the gleams in that music, you know?

as in a fine handkerchief in their sleep
knowing, inevitably, they must go
the fairy tale travelers kept some golden souvenir

to remind them when they woke,
that they were, most certainly, there.
forgive me, anyone else, if I seem exorbitant in

my praise for her prismatic music, muse..

it's only that I thought if he were here
again on earth, dear Frederic of
the rain swept long agos, Forever

moving in sound as if from dark to Light-
just hearing her play this way
would break his heart.

mary angela douglas 12 august 2015