Lavabo

by Richard Foerster

Begin again: cup the faucet’s allegretto in your hands,
try to lather it into light while your eyes stay clamped.

It’s how day’s melody starts — dumb, disordered, blind.
Let the basin gather the milky notes that fall away.

Don’t fret if the room brims with the babble of discordant
yesterdays: the boy still stumbling through those staves,

their sharps and rests, the keys that never unlock
any sense.  Scrub at the dead cells till your liturgy’s done.

Then shut the spigots, listen as the water funnels to its coda,
then wipe away the mirror’s last illusion cast across your face.

Stare into the lucky accident of the silence you’ve achieved,
the score laid out, as yet without notation.