It is slow and soft, the first movement—
the right hand sweeping in smooth triple meter,
the left hand singing against it.
Minor, the key, and mysterious
the melody, slow, it is slow and soft,
a walk through moonlight.
What is it that sometimes rises in us,
this urge toward crescendo, toward swell?
I feel it in my hands as they move
across the stoic keys, an urgency,
a reaching toward climax, a pressing
insistence, as if to sing louder is to sing
more true. But over and over again,
Beethoven reminds us, piano, piano,
his markings all through the music.
Oh beauty in restraint. It is soft,
the moonlight, a delicate fragrance,
it is heart opening, the tune,
it is growing in me, this lesson in just
how profoundly the quiet
can move us. And the hands,
as they learn to trust in softness,
how beautifully they bloom.