Water Music

              I can hear your keyboard
tapping rhythmically as castanets
through the surf of your emotion
as if it's music you were writing,
not a poem. I see the shiver and flash
of your fingers, salmon sifting downstream
to flow into that electronic ocean.
Its current carries words to me.

At times, there is a pause, as if a trumpet
there plays a solo part—a short dirge,
a lament—the percussion humbled, silent.
Then returns the patter of the fugue,
thoughts set out like rain or waves
beneath and licking at a pier.

                                  In my response,
I am respectful as is water in a glass
set near the clock on your nightstand
in case you find that you are thirsty
sometime later in the night. A nocturne
in a minor key, played with pedal down.

Because, of course, of course, the sea.