Green Linden Press

Traveling

We’re sending our father off with symphonies and piano trios—
the TV in his room, set to the classical music station.

Each new piece, accompanied by a scene—city, town,
countryside—usually European—and a few facts.

Dvorak, on his first day of work in the Austrian senate,
stole all the pencils and never came back. They were perfect,

he said, for composing music. In America he raised pigeons.
My sister and I, on either side of our father’s bed, wait for the next

inhale—so relieved when it comes, as if this waiting
is not waiting at all. His breathing is liquid clatter—

the “death rattle” that is nothing like the dry rasp
of my imagination. A woman outside his room announces

her name, says I want to kiss you to someone no one can see.
A man, former CEO, asks loudly about his luggage—

when it will arrive, how they will know which room is his.
He thinks he’s in Prague, maybe Paris. Mozart had a pet bird—

a starling—whom he adored, wrote a poem for. Tchaikovsky
loved to collect mushrooms. On my way outside the facility

for sunlight and fresh air, a woman sidles up to me—like we’re agents
on a secret mission—and whispers into my ear. Something urgent

and incomprehensible. Beethoven kept a conversation notebook
to help him communicate. I’m in a foreign city; it’s dark,

and the streets are wet from a brief, determined rain.

Interview with Lisa Dordal on Water Lessons