Variations
Jenny could hear the jackhammers,
but George and I couldn’t.
Her picture kept freezing. We were meeting
about Bach’s Goldberg Variations,
ascending, descending, inverting,
repeating on the unison, the second, the third.
Men were fixing pipes on her street
and roofers were shouting out back.
Late with the call because this time
the connection required a password,
I was sitting on a beach chair in the garage,
avoiding the plumber upstairs. In Rhode Island,
George played eternal measures on his piano.
Balanced on her basement stairs,
Jenny showed us patterns on her viola
through the spastic tinkle of Zoom.
I tried reading some of my Goldbergs poems,
mostly inaudible. We’ll try again after dinner,
late-night screen time in my damp Boston suburb.
My piano strings adjust with a muffled bang.