Ode to My Wife, A Freelance Harpist
By Isaac James Richards
Who would expect to find
an autumn goddess
in this dingy restaurant
on a summer tonight?
Marble stone for skin
copper coils for hair
amber gems for eyes
Doric column for a crown
a lathe-spun wooden staff
a freelance lyre for hire.
Watch her pluck away
the minutes of the night
pedaling the ecstasies of ears.
She has nothing to give
but vibrating air
or dust that dances
to finer frequencies of light.
Do you take requests?
Come, love, play my heartstrings instead
and I’ll leave you humming with delight.
Rare to find stained glass
windows in a steakhouse.
Afternoon sun still sparkles
in those murky pink and green pastels
like recent memory playing
in the corner of mind’s eye.
Cheap wine on display
cheesy rolls freshly baked
and a live musician warming
to the murmurs of a fillet
sighing as it hits the grill.
I have just finished shuttling
a large number of awkward items
back and forth from the car:
music stand, microphone, amplifier,
sheet music binder, tip jar, Venmo sign,
coat, purse, keys, phone, iPad, and high heels.
Until everything is set up just right,
just so.
Meanwhile, in the bathroom stall
she slips from her sweatpants
and into a gown.
We come here every Friday night
she to play, me to write
but I’m reluctant given
the rowdy atmosphere
and I dislike my uncompensated
employment as a professional
harp mover still I oblige each
of us earning our keep as
college students of the humanitas.
At night’s end
back aching from the bend
she requests her amateur massage.
I always wonder
during this marital ritual
if any evening passerby
noticed the mattress
in the back of our minivan
and wondered at its purpose.
(It’s for harp transportation, nothing else).
But to get better tips should she
wear her diamond or not?
Leaves of auburn hair cascading
down her shoulders she strains
to strum the heartstrings of
indifferent golden agers
who frequent this overpriced place.
Curling Corinthian, wooden tiara
hand-carved scepter swirling skyward
this princess is all glissando.
She’s after dollars not flirtatious winks
from older men and the tip jar
is no chalice, no gilded goblet
or Grecian urn, still
it overflows with emptiness
while a few women scan
a pixel square of dollar signs.
But she doesn’t do it for the money
she also does it out of love.
Sweet serendipity must savor
these sounds and their ideal irony.
The guests never notice
and it took me months to
realize that the painting behind her is
Darin Ashby’s imitation
of Sir Lawrence’s
Listening to Homer (1885).
Not artwork, but now a mirror
reflecting the ghosts of harpists past.
Sweet modern muse
no rushing waiter can write this ballad.
Marble tiles become a balcony
the nearby road becomes the sea
and music transforms to poetry.
The goddess only hopes
they’ll drop a cashless dollar
for the harp a king had loved to hear.
Comparison
too easily
modifies
the truth:
she’s no romantic bard
no aging final minstrel
she’s in crescendo
opening new octaves for the ode
and by the end of the night
we’re both tired
and just want to go home.
Can we, freelance fairy, forgive
these wealthy guests their ignorance?
How much homework we both have left to do
how much history is right here in this room
how caught we are between the two
and they should at least thank you
moonlighting sister of Apollo
millennial daughter of Mnemosyne
for gigging
for tickling history’s heartstrings
while they laugh.
Isaac James Richards is an aspiring poet, current graduate student, and first-year writing instructor. He has won four poetry contest awards, and his poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Constellations, and Young Ravens Literary Review. He is also a current Pushcart Prize nominee. Find him online at https://www.isaacrichards.com/.