Tales of a Songbird

I smile.

I smile from the window seat as he plays, his fingers dancing across the keys as snowflakes waltz through a storm. He doesn’t see me smile, but he feels it, deep down within, and he plays even more gently, strongly, laughingly, beautifully, painfully, for feeling it. At this moment he is unaware of my very existence, and that of every other person in the world. So I smile, wishing to feel that sweet oblivion. The baby grand glistens in the white light of an autumn sky that pours past my back and through the window. It is a very different instrument from the one he learned on, less homey perhaps, but that doesn’t matter to him as it might to some. It is not the piano itself that he loves, this I know. The song is one I have never heard before, but somehow it escapes being unfamiliar. He says that is because I am one of Silent Musicians; which means that although I cannot play, sing, or even whistle the simplest tune, I can feel, and so I am able to hear as well as the one who makes music. The song ends, and drifts into another. He doesn’t want to stop playing. His eyes rest sleepily closed for a moment, then flutter open again. He looks out into the gray day, but he does not see me, or anything else that floats lingeringly out in that world of city. He is staring at emotion.

He is staring at love, hope and despair.

The music fades into sweet sorrow and my eyes mist over with excess admiration. It is a tragic melody, but still I smile. I smile because I know that I could sit here and listen forever, if only life would grant me my first best wish. And I smile because I know that if nothing ever came to interrupt, not hunger nor age, nor sleep, nor death, he would play for me forever, and never regret the years lost.