The Man With One Tune Poem by Timmy Angel Naylor

In a Kaftan coat and an Afghan hat
On a box by the side of the road he sat
And played a battered
Piano accordian.
Time had etched a mystic beauty
Into that weathered Middle Eastern face.
And he had one tune
Just one, just one
As he played in the rain or the morning sun.
I stood, hard listening,
And smugly scanned my
Mental database of music.
And I heard
In that wheezy clatter of notes,
The strains of an old Parisian waltz.

Again and again I passed him by
And heard that tune and wondered why.
Some other locals looked askance
At this offbeat man with his tune from France.
But people came to the town for the day,
Saw him there and heard him play
His waltz
And listened once, then, entertained,
They carried on.

I wish that I could be like him,
A man without airs,
We enter this world like a bare melody,
As life in a single strand,
But get snagged somehow and woven into
The illusions and delusions of being.
He teaches me
That I could unwind,
Just be that bare melody
And love life in a single strand.
(That each day may simply bind two hearts?)

So I loved that man with a tune, just one,
As he played in the rain or the morning sun.
With a Kaftan coat and an Afghan hat
On a box by the side of the road he sat.
I understand a life like that.