How I Met Beethoven in the Psych Ward
       

1801, and Beethoven writes a note
to the pianist: senza sordino through
this first movement, these pianissimo triplets—

treat your whole notes like casual puffs
on a cigarette, hold on until you're ready to let them go.
No accelerando, only more notes,

narcissistic triplets, obsessing over themselves, one-two-three,
tripping over phrases, developing, then giving
up, like procrastination.
                                          In quasi una fantasia

Robbie played me Moonlight Sonata on the yellowed
keys of the Yamaha upright in the dining hall,

settled the creak of the bench, watched his foot find
the pedal. He pushed his hospital ID to the middle of his forearm
until it stretched, and began to chop a melody, forte. Forcing

the notes, common time. The left hand more anxious
than the right. I blinked hard at these awkward rhythms,
these up-and-down-stair climbing notes. Not at all what Beethoven

intended. Not what Rellstab heard as he walked along
Swiss Cantons in the moonlight, not what he saw as a boat
floated like music on Lake Lucerne. When Robbie missed

an accidental, he pounded his palm flat on the keys.
Keep going I told him, and closed my eyes to this unrehearsed
interpretation. Because everything is beautiful

when they don't let you leave. Even among the grunts
of a frustrated stranger, I drowned in Beethoven's
love-song-argued-funeral-hymn.

I was 17. This was about me. This is about me.
He pinky-plucked the song, the triplets repeating,
the weakest three fingers of his right hand forming the melody—

the weakest part of him creating this music—
which as written looks easy, yet is so hard to play.

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Copyright © 2022 Jean Prokott All rights reserved
from The Second Longest Day of the Year
Howling Bird Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission