A one-hour Sunday afternoon violin lesson —

long enough to decant Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s clean

 

from cover to cover, a spillage of trips, traps, tropes,

broken spokes of addiction mingling with the spillage

 

from my daughter’s bow and fingers, sheets of Bartok,

Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart on the stand, slanted

 

almost-spring sunlight streaming through windows,

libations of words and music, obituaries, griefs,

 

hauntings, my daughter’s torn jeans, her bare midriff,

the loud, rhythmic click of a metronome,

 

whilst the world floods and burns, whilst Salman Rushdie

lies in a hospital bed in Erie with life-changing injuries,

 

whilst a Prime Minister attempts to justify his flouting

of convention, his undermining of democracy,

 

the addictions of greed, violence, and power

manifest outside the sunlit windows.