Bag Lady plays Rachmaninoff

Bag Lady walks into a cosmetics store and begins playing the display piano
shop assistants, tourists and lunchtime officeworkers gather around her, tentatively
The tight mouth
The eyes focused
Look out! She’ll bite your head off!

a dark blue suit arrives says It’s good PR
cameramen appear
women reporters comb hair over the perfume counter

offered a theatre restaurant job she tells them to shove it
she learnt classical music eleven years ago in Perth
Before her marriage fell apart

A Human interest item at the end of the TV news

" Sometimes she plays for 5 minutes, sometimes for 5 hours…"
The fickle finger of fate hovers over the ‘vision selector’ button

Returning to music she could not forget,
like a wet and hungry
shaggy dog
With paws worn and ragged

They booted her out
Didn’t let her sleep in the store that night


Malcolm Hill 2004