Pavarotti and I

A flight of fancy that felt more real than some days of my life

Luciano Pavarotti just walked into my kitchen.
He is crying,
not for all those arias that made their way through him
when he was a much younger man,
but for the ones not yet written,
the joy of a thousand composers still unborn.

He asks if I have a clove of garlic,
which I am glad to say I do and toss it to him,
amazed at how large a man he is.
He finds the knife, himself,
humming as he makes his way across the room
and begins chopping, slowly at first
and then with great abandon,
almost as if the 10 million people for whom he has performed
were all in the room with us, which they are,
hearts bursting
like unpicked pomegranates beneath a Tuscan sun.

Pavarotti, I am happy to say,
keeps on chopping,
even when I think, for the third time,
the pieces are small enough
for the sauce he…