Adagio

So this is a sonnet I wrote for The Music Professor, just today. Took me longer to post it than write it. I love his Youtube videos because I love classical music. I was born to be a baroque composer, but somehow I signed the wrong contract in the moments before birth. And here I am—a poet. This is why you need a lawyer. In this video he sight reads one of Beethoven’s last piano sonatas, his E major Sonata, Op. 109, first movement. When I try to sight read music, despite playing the piano since I was seven, the whole exercise goes sideways—very quickly. I’m musically dyslexic. I joked that I’m a terrible musician. Wouldn’t I love to improvise a fugue! But I can improvise a sonnet. Sigh. Give me an hour, I said. Mr King said, write one, so here it is—a Shakespearean Sonnet just for Mr. King. Took me just under an hour. Lest, like Mozart thought of Beethoven, I came with a prepared piece of music when asked to improvise, I closed the sonnet with a couplet and sentiment that I thought he might enjoy.

  There is an early morning wind among
  The trees that cracks the barren limbs and creaks
  In sap turned thick as wood. What leaves once strung
  An idle summer’s afternoon are weeks
  And weeks gone by. The chickadee
  And crow, for all of that, are satisfied
  To speak for all their host who chose to flee
  The icy perch of ash and birch. Abide,
  They say, abide. They do not know the moon
  Those winter nights before the sun has stirred,
  Nor stars among the icicles. Too soon
  To wish away these nights who have not heard
    The canticles of February’s snow—
    The season’s reverent adagio.

  Adagio  
  by me, Patrick Gillespie, February 3 2026