The Composer by Anne Whitehouse | Streetlight Magazine

…………………………for John Kander

Music plays in my head,
and I listen. Sounds and rhythms,
echoes and vibrations.
This is how I move through space,
how I comprehend my world.

Long, long ago,
when I was a baby in Kansas City,
I caught tuberculosis.
In those days, there was no cure.

Isolated on a sleeping porch,
I learned to match the sounds
of approaching footsteps
with the ones who made them.

But footsteps go both ways.
A residue of loneliness
lingers after all these years.
Music is the antidote.

torn sheet music on old, stained piano keys — *Untitled*by Phil Henry, on *Unsplash*.

Anne Whitehouse’s poem, “Outside from the Inside,” was published in Streetlight Magazine in 2018. Her poetry collections include The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, Outside from the Inside, and Steady, as well as the art chapbooks Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, Frida, Being Ruth Asawa, and the forthcoming Adrienne Fidelin Restored. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love.