Cellist at Midnight

First, there was discipline
Forty years of practice rooms,
metronomes marking time

Fingers calloused from strings,
shoulders shaped to hold this wooden body

For decades, she counted eighth notes, sixteenth notes,
measured vibrato

Even on stage, at the height of her career:
the difficult passage in measure 94

But tonight, the practice room holds only her
The building dark, windows black mirrors

No audience but shadows
No performance, no recording
Nothing to prove

First note and something shifts
Her attention moves from fingers
to sound itself

Without noticing, she closes her eyes
The metronome unset
The score unread

Now her hands have their own mind
They remember what she forgets

The Bach suite plays itself

What rises now isn’t practice
isn’t performance

The music arrives as if it always existed this way

The self that struggled, that counted, that achieved,
is gone

Now there is only bow meeting string,
vibration becoming something greater

The building’s watchman, passing,
hears something that makes him stop

What he hears
isn’t skill, though skill made it possible

What he hears is Bach becoming breath
becoming building

The cellist’s body now just a vessel,
her technique vanished into pure sound

Only later, when the final note fades,
does she return to herself

Surprised to find tears on her cheeks,
not remembering when

The watchman continues his rounds,
carrying something he cannot name
but recognizes from his own life:
rare moments when the doer disappears

She packs her cello, turns out the light,
walks to her car

For those minutes, something played through her
that wasn’t her at all

Form forgotten, music remembered