Eleanor Lerman: Fiddlestick

Oh, I’m in a French mood tonight
looking out the window at the moon
lying lazy on her back in a tattered
velvet sky and the flowers that bloom
in the rubble of the night weaving
their petals into chains and those chains
into the vast rubble of love

Oh yes, this is a night for chandeliers,
when I have eyes on the faithless sea
that rises and falls with my endless grief
Admit nothing tonight: break everything
that can be broken and banished and
let it be known that the heart
is nothing but an old fiddlestick
lying forgotten in the grass

And yet, tonight this dark house
shudders; the windows allow the
wind free reign of all the territories
of the great and deep unknown
when forgotten footsteps suddenly
are heard again—and a locked
door opens, words are spoken…

Yes, tonight, words are spoken
and me, me, with so little left to say

~~~~

Copyright 2025 Eleanor Lerman

Eleanor Lerman is the author of award-winning collections of poetry, short stories and novels. She is a National Book Award finalist and has received a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as fellowships from the NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her eighth collection of poetry, Oleander Marriage, will be published by Mayapple Press in September 2025 and a new collection of short stories, King the Wonder Dog and Other Stories, will be published by She Writes Press in 2026.