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Judson Evans

Sonata for Garden Tools

The dusty dark salon made a shrine room by the piano of some famous Polish protégé. Three Hundred and One Haiku for Piano. Each one for a year since Basho’s death. So disciplined, so ready for the sonic bitter pill, I try to find a way within the music, still sure there has to be an inside. Through the window, sunny Saturday, a man across the street prepares to work, sets tools in order against the side of a barn. Shingles blown off, the roof coming unwoven to its separate ribbons. Listening into silences between the phrases, I close my eyes, follow contours of the sound, a chore and then a sport and then an absence. At each abrupt beginning, the man advances a new task, another set of tools is gone. Music washes, trims, and planes, drags its ladders. A wake of tools taken and replaced. Then, the man is gone, the music locked, the fragile structure somehow standing.

cutting word
flow of the waterfall
broken by stones