How she must have dreaded us and our sweaty coins, more <br />than we hated practice, the lessons, scales, the winter-hot parlor, <br /> <br />her arthritic hands, the metronome’s awful tick. She lectured <br />to us about the history of the piano: baby and concert grand, <br /> <br />spinet and player had come across oceans in the holds of ships, <br />across continents in mule-drawn wagons, heavier than all the dead <br /> <br />left behind. On her face we could see the worry: all the struggle had come <br />to this, the tacky black upright she had once loved haunting the room <br /> <br />it could never leave. And her piano was now part of a mute, <br />discordant population doomed to oldfolks homes, bars, church basements, <br /> <br />poolhalls, funeral parlors—or more mercifully abandoned <br />on back porches where at least chickens could nest, or the cat have kittens. <br /> <br />So when she could no longer play well enough even to teach us, <br />she hired some of the men to haul out and burn the piano <br /> <br />in the field behind the house. We watched the keys going furious and all at once, <br />heard in the fire a music-like relief when the several tons of tension <br /> <br />let go, heat becoming wind on our faces. We learned that when true ivory burns <br />the flame is playful, quick and green. And in the ash, last lessons: the brass, <br /> <br />clawed feet we had never before noticed, the harp’s confusion <br />of wire, the pedals worn thin, shaped like quenched-hard tongues—loud, soft, <br /> <br />sustain. We waited with her until they were cool enough to touch.<br /><br />Claudia Emerson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/piano-fire/
