A poem about Paris.

from w

Paris:  let the music move you

His feet  dance on the pedalboard.

He doesn’t see me though he possibly breathes in

the smell of baguettes and pungent cheese

tucked into the pocket of my apron 

as well  as floor wax. His nose twitches,

he looks vaguely in my direction

but I am hidden, on my knees

 in a choir stall of the Madeleine.

 The man’s hair flops as his fingers move

up and down two keyboards.

Then he pauses, draws marks on paper,

not words just dots.

This is not my mother’s kind of music

where the accordion music  is jolly, 

Shadows striped, or circled bright light.

The music shrieks, pitched high

at the Red Mill, familiar to me

though my mother frowns when she sees me

sitting beside the silent dwarf from Toulouse.

He once made a sketch of her, bold lines, a cruel red .

When he asks me to pose  I decline,

winning my mother’s approval.