Vivaldi

When I met Vivaldi it was dark, a ragman lashed his horse’s bells, streets tilted into slow wind tunnels, no, it was another night, in winter, snow as soft as opium, two winoes wassailed down an alley through a milk truck’s ruts, in the subways a violin was whistling down chrome tracks, past cobalt semaphores, rats and pennies underneath the 3rd rail . . . Has it never been so quiet that you’ve heard the manhole covers rumble when the El goes overhead? Icicles growing? Could you tell the difference between the sound of filaments in light bulbs burning down, and a dulcimer played in a padded cell? A meager music hovers everywhere: at mouths of drains, echoing stairwells where girls in muslin disappear whispering “allegro.” When I closed my eyes, less than a ghost, Vivaldi cupped a mouth harp like a match against the wind.