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Posts Tagged ‘piano’

Dusting the Piano

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 29, 2013| 1 Comment »

The best part, of course,
is dusting the keys, sliding

the damp rag

from top to bottom, from high

notes to low,

over the blacks and into
the valleys of the smooth

long whites, how

a showering of music then

fills the room.

I nearly wish there were

more work

to do. Sometimes I forget there
is joy to be found in just touching

a thing, though

I have touched it a thousand

thousand times

before. How the skin meets it
anew. Sometimes I forget that

I know what

a hand can do, oh the smooth

of it, oh

the slide, the skim, the skate of it,

oh the slipping,

the flutter, the long and longing

(remember?) glide.

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Some Call it Noise

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 21, 2013| 5 Comments »

“Mom,” he says,
“I love this note.”
I sit beside my boy
on the bench
and I say, “It’s a D,
a low D.”
And he plays
the white key
again and again
and again and
again with animal
ferocity. “Can you find
another D?” I ask,
and he finds another,
to my delight, and another
and another and another.
Then he plays the Ds
with two hands—
one a bass and one
a thrumming, heavy beat.
Again, again,
again, again,
his body is a-thrill
with it. “I love this note,”
he says again,
his eyes electric,
wild with tone,
“Mom”, he says,
“will you write
this down?
Please mom,”
he begs, as he
hammers the Ds
with an almost
violent grace.
While he sleeps,
I draw the darksome notes
in his rhythmic trance
on two otherwise empty staves.
The notes are the Union
Pacific westbound;
and they are the boy,
his feet eager as he pounds
across the field;
and they are the railing
of hail in the orchard;
and they are the hands
of a boy who is banging
out his rampant joy, freed
from a language
dipped in lead,
God, he’s free,
he is pushing all of himself
into D; and they are
the boulders
tumbled by snowmelt,
thundering along
the full riverbed;
the sound of the heart
when it beats for no reason
except that it
was made to beat.

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Memory While Playing Duets with Evie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 20, 2013| 3 Comments »

At thirteen, after eight years
of piano lessons, I lost myself
in a Mozart Sonatina. It was
a competition. I was sitting
at a grand piano at the front
of a church. The judge sat
in the first pew. My dad sat in the back.
I made it through the long runs
of the first movement. Through
the slow diminished chords
of the second. I was clumsy,
my rhythms uneven, my fortes not
convincing, my arpeggios stuttered.
My fingers did not know what they were doing,
though we had been practicing
together for months, though they
had had many good teachers.
I wore a pin-striped tuxedo,
a white ruffled shirt. It was fitted too tight
in my shoulders, but it made me
feel what, like a man? At least
not like a girl. God, I wanted
it over. At the end of the third movement,
I reached to the top of the treble keys
before coming back down
in the final run, but somewhere at the top
my hands returned to the notes of the first movement.
There was nothing to be done
but to finish the thing the way it had begun.
The judge shuffled through
the sheet music, trying to discern
what had happened. I did not cry,
not until I left the room
and I held my dad and he told me
the terrible lie that I had done fine.
He said it with so much love,
but it wasn’t true.
I don’t know where the lines are
between truth and love. Why do we
protect each other the ways that we do?
What else could he say? It doesn’t much matter.
He loved me. I grew out
of the shirt. I told myself the truth.

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Playing Again Opus 37, No. 1 in G Minor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 10, 2013| 3 Comments »

I stretch my span
for the low, low D, but
over-reach and hit a C.

The nocturne
bristles on its slender staves.
Clumsy hands grope to apologize—

they stutter and blunder
through intricate ornaments
and fumble in the chorale.

In my mind, it is so lovely.
I hear Chopin’s consoling swell
as the legato chords progress.

Oh curve of the hand,
I remember you well,
palm hollowed

so only the finger pads touch.
In my mind, there are
lovers dancing.

I keep my shoulders soft.
In my mind,
the moon appears.

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