Greetings from Kaminibassi

Kaminibassi 18 x 24 cm Ölpastell - c/o Karin Goeppert

WHILE YOU WERE OUT

The trees were offering their support.

They signaled this by shaking out the light in their leaves.

I watched a jogger steam past; a multiply tattooed girl

in unlaced combat boots sweep the door step

of a tavern, smoking and muttering beautifully,

her mind a mess but obviously still functioning;

traffic thickening in a bottleneck. You are trying

to decipher my message, wondering if you should

just give up, maybe go out for a beer, perhaps talk to the

neighbor you’ve been avoiding for a year or longer

because he always looks as if he has bad news for you

but is asking himself whether it’s worth it,

whether you really need to know

that the land lord is contemplating a substantial rent increase,

that a three-generational family of Serbian gypsies 

is moving into the apartment upstairs next month,

or that your wife receives a male visitor every Tuesday morning

during “home office,” and that you just might be better off,

in the end, clueless if relatively content, an occasional reader

of what life was up to while you were out.

Schumann - Piano Concerto 1st movement 

performed by Dang Taih Son

Paavo Jarvi conducts l'Orchestre de Paris