Fred, Half Dead, Beethoven In His Head
You can’t talk to Beethoven
on a bus stop in Chicago
because you’ll just get lost.
Lauded as a genius,
he can’t give good directions
because he’s dead.
.
Ask Fred about Beethoven
about Fred
his hands waving wildly with excitement like
the vibrations coming up through his feet.
conducting symphonies in an empty room.
Fred will tell you how planets hum
give directions to angry flocks of pigeons
lecture on string theory
like harpsichords, and how Beethoven was more
of a transcriber than a composer.
I picture the two sitting together
lost in deep conversation.
Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes for the Minneapolis school district and writing classes at The Loft Literary Center. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Tampa Review, The Comstock Review, and the St. Paul Almanac, and she is the 2011 recipient of the Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her most recent published books are Walking Twin Cities and Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch.