TEX KOENIG IN PASSING

I learned today of a musician's passing.
I watched one die before
and they do not die like swans.
I passed him in the market a thousand times
and only stopped the once.
Many a time on a Saturday,
amidst the profusion of morning vegetables
brought in to nourish all those
like me, whose lives are slowly
Destroying the family farm,
He looked like a vast prize gourd
or the Buddha of Front Street East.
I only stopped the once, between the maple syrup
and the desire for some new kind of cheese, and
heard him in some great and rising song.
Caught out from the flow, I listened to the end.
"What was that?" I said below the endless noise.
"Northwest Passage," he replied.
"Oh, that is what all the fuss is about with that song."
"Yep, that is what all the fuss is about."
In memory, I am generous, and perhaps I was, and went my way.
Years have passed, and now I hear that song in his voice and others, and many more.

Rilke says: Music is the water of life, bubbling and running endlessly over
the fountain-basin of the soul.
I learned today of a musician's passing,
And into my ears comes the sound of the St. Lawrence Market fountain,
and farther off, almost inconceivably far, in a place where the light is different,
comes the sound of newly breaking ice.

Peter T.