He makes the bridges sing and knits light into notes of his sadness.
He walks through city streets, drunk on neon, drugged on ambulance sirens, weaves sounds of darkness into music of light.
Then sits on the bank shore and types with headphones muffling the river, the cries of the tourists, the shrieks of the gulls. He cries through the keyboard, foot in permanent tase.
Piano shimmers on the shingles, tiptoes on the rails of the bridge. Clarinet wraps trees and warms up birds’ wings. River of light flows over the river and his hazel eyes follow, lips moving in synch with the ruffle of clouds on night skies. Fingers caress the white soul of seven bars of elegy, escaping the black of the river’s quays.
Struggle, worry, then joy hide away in the quickness of train tracks. But when you let yourself go, feather-touched by a quizzical clarinet wave, the joy’s jumping jig catches up. With you. With him.
The river’s cool feet caress rounded pebbles, alight on the notes, invited by the bridge’s light show, to the wispy waves of mauve and blue melody.
The voice. His voice of sorrow unknown to love and loneliness, it just knows how much of this homely comfort of streets and cars it wants to escape. It prays and whispers and insists in an unforgiving wave of beauty.
His voice lifts the bridge’s body laced with airy light. Light swings with river. River warms stone. Stone embraces rails. Boats stalk gulls.
Sirens awake cathedral bells.
London sings with the voice of my son.
Dora Court 