Cul-de-sac

Walking the dog
through the cool bluish dark
you may be fortunate enough
to enter the cul-de-sac
in time to overhear, from one
of the yellow windows
of the nearby apartment complex, someone --
a child? --
practicing the violin.

It's not important that they be good at it -- in fact,
it may be best if they aren't. How rare,
to be near to one who, concentrating,
neither senses your nearness nor fears it.
You stand a long time,
listening, as one sequence
is played over and over,
plaintive swathes of bow
creaking, pleading,
seeking something,

as the dog strains toward home,
and you try to follow the flight
of a little bat overhead,
a nick of black against blue
beyond the flicker of the streetlight.