Dear man playing the giant cello (double bass)

I watched you silently from my place amid the masses
As you sat alone on stage

Around you stood the empty chairs
Still awaiting instruments and bodies
But you didn’t seem to notice

Slowly drawing the bow across the strings
While fingers danced seemingly unaided

I sketched you then in my mind so that I might always remember the way your brow was furrowed
Hair astray in the fashion most expected by a being that has not slept in as many days as artists of unheard merit are apt to do

I traced the joints of your fingers curled around the dark wooden handle almost, but never touching the off white fabric that stretched between one point and the other

In my mind I found I could only liken you and your appearance to that of others I had only read of
All fictional of course

Here a wayward detective long since run down but never out sank his sorrows in a bottle while his mind fractured but still brilliant carried on

But then there were so many others that also came to mind, each tugging at the corners of my imagination with passionate desperation
Attempting in the only way they knew to be the sole capture of my attention

In this corner I found a journalist well traveled as he was versed, with the quality beseeching that of a gentleman hidden under two days worth of growth

But perhaps your likeness might be more suited to the air of a more scientific mind, secret genius cultivating cures for every kind of illness while still trapped in the depths of madness

I sat and watched as you played unnoticed for what seemed to me just a moment but was far more then that as my mind turned over the possibility of all the people you could have been

But when asked softly why didn’t I rise from my unnoticed place and put to rest my chaotic thoughts by moving close to speak to you if only for a moment

I resisted

What could I say to let them understand the path my mind had run
How I was unwilling to leave my seat, held there by this slight fear

That if I dared to find my voice, to rise and cross the space between the seats… to draw close enough that you might see me
All that I had imagined you to be would be crushed or somehow dulled by the harsh light of reality

You might not be a gentleman, suave and smooth with charm or reflect even a bit the madness of a scientist whose sanity has long since gone…
You might be so far from the truth that I’d never write this poem

So I sat silently in my place amid the masses

Watching you draw your bow across the strings while your fingers danced unaided