She is eleven, maybe twelve,
but numbers no longer matter,
for she has heard Bach and Mozart
for the first time,
has mastered the mathematics of the wind,
the heart’s algebra,
where A is not A and need not be,
and now her fingers conduct the weather
until it shivers with illuminations.
She walks, then skips, then
spins to a private pantomime
that need not reveal itself,
for she is the conductor.
Silent notes come swirling around her
in wizard colors of the new,
and the ecstatic leaves whirl
in xylophones of dance.
She feels her joy float from breath to breath.
Bezeled light dazzles round a point,
a perfect jewel, emerald, topaz, diamond,
as her will decides, for she is the conductor,
and everything is all right, for a moment all right.
Then, as the sky imagines a storm,
and the school bus pulls up,
she folds a crescendo inside a breeze
and sets it free.
About Sean Lause
