Painting by Bev Jackson
Listening to Hauser's Cello Play Albinoni at a St. Augustine Concert
I barely remember selecting
Albinoni's Adagio, one of Mom's favorites,
for her Amherst memorial,
its gentle, insistent surrender,
overwhelmed as I was then by
twin prisons: red wine, crushing debt.Shadows cast that late afternoon
in a dizzying old church:
slant-lit tall windows
with polished black marble sills.
I clutched the closest one, refusing
to let go, my fingerprints
marring its shine.I vowed not to be like her, alcoholic,
twenty-two empty vodka bottles
under her bed, the house otherwise spotless.
Her Steinway found its path
back to me, where I played my childhood
"Moonlight Sonata", practiced her "Pathetique" score,
from Adagio Cantabile to Rondo Allegro.Once sober, all three movements accessible, I
cringed over lost, humorless, soggy hang-xiety days,
saw sunlight in spaces, faces, others like me
who implied if only we could enter a hangover booth
a moment before
pouring the poison, hoisting to guzzle, and insteadpause, pray, proceed gently, inhale
the smooth spirit of this living cello's lure,
we might avoid the dark abyss
then raise our consciousness,
bow our souls to a celestial cure.
