Inspired by the street performers in Nürnberg, Germany.
The Music Man
He was a collective collapse crumpled in a clump on the stair. Plopped against the brown brick wall, it was hard to tell who was holding up whom. His face was creased like old wax paper, and his eyes seemed to sag in their sockets. His skin folded over itself, like his accordion, and flapped while he played. His boot thumped, ba-dump, ba-dump, bumping along to the accordion’s song.
Two little feet waddling nearby pulled by the pulsing air began to pump two plump calves down, up up, down up up. Ten toes tumbled clumsily over crooked cobblestones, tickling the faces of those passing by.
The old man’s laugh croaked across the square, creaking like the church door hinges in the crisp early morning air.
Several shoppers stopped, startled that the crumpled old coat covered a corpus still very much alive. The wind wiped silver strands across his brow, painting in the lines. He shivered, and the accordion shuddered in his hands. The two little feet with ten little toes stuttered as the melody mumbled on.
Chilled by the breeze, the music marched more quickly now, stepping swiftly and sure. Though neither harried nor hurried, it steadily carried to the old woman who perched nearby. Her legs, knobby stumps, stuck out six inches from her chair. Her hair nested in a knot on her head. Lifted by the melody, her hands waved, as if whirling a wand, in front of her face. Her long, spindly fingers spun stories in the sky. Though she sat stuck, her spirit sung while her hands soared (across the invisible music score?) in magic worlds only she could see. For it is music’s melody that sets both old and young souls free.