Leonore Wilson

Night-Blooming Jasmine

          “…he would give you almost everything, except himself.”
                  Franz Liszt on his friend and fellow composer, Frederic Chopin

These ones do not throw out their scent like stars
but keep their fragrance hidden
the way nectar is kept or happiness
and sometimes sorrow. When Chopin left
his native Poland for France, he was only twenty,
but musically he was complete. Inside of him–
the green and gold countryside,
the grain fields and forests of poplar and birch, willow,
and fir; the quiet streams, the voices
of his people, and always love that failed.
I listen to the nocturnes late in the evening
when the children are in bed, and I think of my mother
playing when I was young, I think of the most tender
memories of the slightest touch when he that I burned for
could not touch me. This is the purity of beauty
when we walk back over the vows and dangers,
the lost graces and temptations. Art makes a treaty
with this business of lost time and failed flesh.
The piano-strings comprehend; they too bore witness.
Each note placating what is neglected
and forgotten. The night-jasmine climbs vine-like
over the walls of the house as the keys descend
and settle. Near Warsaw, a man slight and elegant,
draws on his white gloves and boards the coach
for Paris. He doesn’t look back. With modest self-assurance
he works those melodies that idle in his head.

Author Bio

Leonore Wilson teaches at a private university in San Francisco. Her work has been featured in such magazines as Quarterly West, Madison Review, Poets Against the War, Pedestal, Magma, Third Coast, etc. She has won fellowships and grants for her writing and been nominated for 3 Pushcart Awards.