3 Poems up on WBUR's Cognoscenti for Poetry Month
In the Dead of Winter in Somerville Underneath the street, beside the tracks, between the trains, an Asian woman—all angles, few curves, removes her black cloak, inserts her violin between her chin and collarbone and launches into “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones that morphs into some wild, jazz/blues fusion, and draws a crowd with raised eyebrows and unexpected smiles. We toss dollar bills into the worn case at her feet. When the train roars in, she stops and bows and we clap. Do you have a CD? Someone calls. She shakes her head. She is older than I thought. Her roots are gray. I step onto the train wondering how many years it took to reach that plateau of facility with bow and strings.