One Perfect Chord

One Perfect Chord

By JD Miller

One perfect chord 

Kept drifting in through the walls 

Of our brand new apartment, 

One piece of what my wife,

With her feet up in my lap

Tells me is a very famous song. 

One perfect chord,

And a bunch of other very good ones,

They kept on marching in,

From who knew where, 

An invisible piano, an invisible pianist, 

Faceless, nameless, genderless

(Though I imagine a woman, her face 

Barred by light from the mini blinds, 

A practicing bird inside a bright cage, 

Of 500 square feet)

It was as if the morning itself,

With its quiet sun falling

Sideways on the still trees,

And the passing bicyclists below,

Had commissioned the piece

As a gift perhaps, or just medicine 

For its own soul, being surrounded 

At all times by mainly crows.

And I, sitting lazily

With coffee and a book, 

Surrounded by unhung pictures 

And mirrors, a box of silent records, 

Just happened to be at 

The exact right place, and time, 

Of all the places and times to be, 

To hear that perfect chord,

Played solely for me, for only a moment, 

Before it went silent, 

And to feel the outer crust of my heart 

Peel altogether off.