“There is a voice inside the body.

There is a voice and a music,
a throbbing, four-chambered pear
that wants to be heard, that sits
alone by the river with its mandolin
and its torn coat, and sings
for whomever will listen
a song that no one wants to hear.

But sometimes, lost
on his way to somewhere significant,
a man in a long coat, carrying
a briefcase, wanders into the forest.

He hears the voice and the mandolin,
he sees the thrush and the dandelion,
and feels the mist rise over the river.

And his life is never the same,
for this having been lost –
for having strayed
from the path of his routine,
for no good reason."

Michael Blumenthal, “A Man Lost By a River"