Street Busker of Her Heart

Street Busker of Her Heart


Homesick little Nina was curled tight to the wall,
seeking comfort from ragged high school gym shorts
and a laundry stolen older brother's tee-shirt.
She was out on her own and not liking it much,
turning a nobody face away from the nightly blinking neon.
It pulsed throughout her hunted rabbit dreams of mist and silence,
a beat of vampires, aliens, monsters, muggers, rapists, STRANGERS, loneliness.

Shy little Nina moved with measured invisibility
amidst the discordant humanity in that bleak city of no season.
Looming walls of glass reflected endless avenues of glass.

She perceived the world in inadvertent peeks from downcast eyes.
Wearing a muted gray wool coat over timidly hunched shoulders,

she kept one hand deep pocketed and mace curled,
the other purse strap strangle locked.
Her dark hair fell forward to shield a defeated spirit.

Sad little Nina, with her tuneless inner mantra of
"Don't touch me, don't hurt me, don't SEE me."
Turning some same street corner...
to stand transfixed, held breath holding her heart in place
until an unkind jostle sent her scurrying away.

She was soon locked again within a stark white place
where black numbers held precise and perfect columns
and even Muzak was banned as too distracting.

Homely Daniel, long face, wide mouth, freckled, and skinny,
had kind eyes half focused on a better world for all to hear.

He was set up by a fountain Nina had never even noticed.
Worn guitar strap, worn corduroy jacket, worn jeans, worn shoes,
and red hair charmed from its tie by the vagrancy's of street corner winds
were accompanied by a long scarf flapping its tattered ends in rhythm with the tune.
And the tune, the tune was foot thumping, head bobbing, body dancing,
flat out soul bared heart pumped MUSIC.

Magnificent Daniel, guitar virtuoso to the city's song.
The sounds of stiletto pumps, sturdy boots, jogging sneakers, and business heels

were slapped and tapped against the wood in syncopated staccato.
He finger picked the cry of misplaced seagulls, cooing pigeons,
and yapping little dogs on too long leashes.
In his chording was the sound of accented voices
raised in laughter, barter, anger, praise.
He strummed the neon buzz of a thousand city lights.

Wondering Nina was back the next morning, and the next, and a month of nexts
as dandelions bloomed in sidewalk cracks.
She crept the seven steps to the back of the crowd
and made the dash to throw a crumpled, sweaty-palmed dollar
into the battered, felt lined case.
Every day then, a dollar.
A dollar for butterfly flight, fairytale enchantments,
wind-chimes over water, delight.

Wondering Daniel, playing his life one song at a time,
soon watched for the girl who forgot to guard her face when she heard his tunes.
He saw a body held as taut as his guitar strings;

passion, ecstasy, and rapture from a self-contained back row.
One day, with the world in spring waltz time,
Nina leaned forward with her dollar clutched hand.
Daniel closed his case with a rather grubby sandaled toe,
stilled his music, and offered a smile to the startled brown eyes.

Summer lovers Nina and Daniel
learned that one elongated beam of sunlight
found the studio efficiency at ten on a Sunday morning.
Kaleidoscope color would play on a waiting guitar

as fingertip arpeggios played in silent song on slumbering skin.
They ate foreign food greasy fingered from cheap flowered plates

as edgy musician friends sat cross-legged
and littered the floor with coffee cups and misplaced picks.

Lovely Nina, head held high and chandelier earrings bobbing,
wearing a red gypsy dress and bare feet, learned to dance.
Even Daniel's laughter at Nina's gloriously atonal caterwaul made music.

She linked her arm with Daniel's and reveled in
back room bazaars of crowds and noise and color
where the keys and chords were mixed and matched on whimsy.
Street Busker of her heart, lyricist of her thoughts, composer of her dreams,
Daniel played their song in harmony into the autumn.