You never think much about accordians
until a masterful woman spins one from imagination,
with all its history
and irrelevance-
only to end ignominiously.

But that little green concertina is your constant companion now,
in a world where you love music
through a tin ear.

And it’s why,
while waiting in a crowded San Francisco airport,
one of the accordian’s stories comes alive,
wheezing notes turned into thrumming poetry
as an ordinary man with grey beard and balding pate
wends his way through some doleful memory or another.

 No one pays attention-
you wouldn’t have before befriending the beleaguered concertina-
but it trembles your heart
as the player’s grandson sits on the dirty floor
counting money out of a scruffy baseball cap.

You feel you’ve missed your moment,
somehow disappointing Annie
by not acting on what has changed your landscape,
creating intimacy in the epitome of anonymity -
the airport – when you had your chance.

But you can’t ignore the unlikely siren song
echoing in your head.
Seizing the poemness of the event -
reverting to your lifelong desire to live on a page
all the while realizing this is much closer to the bone -
you approach the man,
though he’s retired his little squeezebox
and the boy has pocketed the paltry change.

You hand him a dollar,
a little embarrassed to be marking the epiphany with
crude currency,
and, heart pounding and face flushed,
you ask him if he’s read the book.

Does he know his green accordian’s a star?
He doesn’t,
but he says he’ll find the tale.
He may think you’re a little strange.
It doesn’t matter.

Your history has finally been shaped by a fiction
tangy and persistent,
and while some get it backwards saying art imitates life,
and others would find such a moment absurd,
nothing will ever be the same.

 -23 October 1997