I’ll have the piano tuner
for his fingers even the one that’s
half-missing inaction
stripping his skin to jazzed-up
water-wind
Thursday I’ll have his face
Friday his telltale hair
the strand that lops over his eye
canicular like summer when the room stings
with his reserve pitching what he hears
in drum and hammer coquillage
so pearled and pure I want him to come back
next week unlock
the spleen in a semitone petite fleur
swimming from one end of his memory
to my hippocampus fudged and back
leaving a wake of structure in the keys
the spine of residual stars
on my deathbed too I want him
tuning the tunnels from here to all the phantoms
no fanfare just pp though agitato’s okay
if that’s what he wants
we won’t be such strangers by then