THE TRUTH

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    Thin rain sifted down and I was glad I had put on my thick wool cap when I stepped on the deck, thinking about things--
the day, cool jazz music playing in my studio, thin crescent moon and Venus hiding behind clouds, the woman giving me trouble, and how nobody took her seriously but me for reasons that I'd begun to figure out.  Asking me questions I didn't have answers for, until I stopped her cold.  
   'You dig hard, until everyone is worn out,' I'd said.  'You grind and grind and grind until there's nothing left'.  Others had told her the same things, I said.      
     Then she started to cry, and I walked out of the office and thought, You're not so tough, are you?'
   Floating down slow, the rain, my felt cap warm on my head and all of the stars I couldn't see, weather swirling in front of them that would pass in a few hours, maybe a day.  My neck felt loosened up now, the piano chords unfolding beneath a sweet trumpet.  Made her cry, I did, but it wasn't me.
   It was the truth. 

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