Ivory, black, and the metronome.
Ivory, black, and the metronome,
beating, trickling, rhythmic water clocking
down and down the keys.
The piano loft is cold. The ceramic tile
is tan and cracked in white veins, running wild,
thunder in a cage.
The floor was always cold, too cold,
too easy for your foot to sit on the pedal.
Making every note, every tone, long and ominous.
It was always okay though, I always liked the sad stuff.
There were the bay windows,
clean and without screens peering out. Letting
in unblemished shafts of light and sun.
The windows would peer out to the crab-apple tree,
that in spring would blossom a faded velvet rouge, and illuminate the
wind a thousand miles away.
In summer we’d open the windows and the breeze would
follow us in and out.
The keys would move to Mozart and Beethoven and Handel.
All those phantoms would come drifting by, they would.
The music would crescendo out and chords would fall dead,
and the beats became irregular and awkward.
But that didn’t matter.
The old man across the street who hated us, even when
we parked too close to his driveway.
“I love that music, please leave it all open” he’d say.
More crescendos, more chords, more light chimes falling
in the hot afternoons.
The Cicadas, jealous and arrogant, would buzz and whine
until the final bit of daylight waned.
Which it always did, with a graceful bow.
The loft, a vessel, it held pouting children, arrogant teens,
and nostalgic adults.
And in time it’ll hold nothing,
but the harmony will remain.
And that’s all the phantoms and I
require.