MAGIC

I never mastered it but always knew
There was a gesture -- a certain
Angle of the wrist, or fingers rolled
Exactly so and there would be
Something not there before.
When I lunched with him my better self
Urged me to desist. "It is a trick,"
He said, "and not one worth learning."
Then he reached into thin air
And pulled down a lighted cigarette.
That my better self who, long ago,
I gave up trying to imitate,
Can do magic is unsurprising
But when did he start smoking?

PROGRESS

When he was a roving teenager,
Racketing from town to town, Mozart
Learned sign language. He wrote Nannerl,
His sister, that, bored in Milan,
He was eating  peaches and melons
And amusing himself by signing.
In some other world his old age
Brought forth what many deemed
His finest work: an opera
Made from gesture and silence

And the memory of Italian peaches.