.

this morning,
knowing how the sweetest things
stay hidden from the mirrored mind
and with all ten fingers
stretched across cold keys,
I held high C
until it married dawn,
until black lace recovered blue,
grew dark veins of hope
that cast a thousand tiny branches
at the sleepy sky and tugged
the vault of heaven loose
from underneath my steel-stubborn lake

"As in clear glass when it is polished bright
or in a still and limpid pool whose waters
are not so deep that the bottom is lost from sight,

a footnote of our lineaments will show;
so pallid that our pupils could as soon
make out a pearl upon a milk-white brow..."
(Dante)