There was a time when pianos
came from forests - ivory, ebony:
the eloquence of elephants and trees
and of the seven seas, the whales
that sob and sing slain for baleen
to make the finest springs.
I remember how you'd sit,
serving your apprenticeship,
patiently releasing fugues
and preludes from reluctant keys,
or silently communing with the daimon
deep within, resting your flushed forehead
against wood-grain polished to high gloss,
reflecting you as enigmatic twin.
Your piano once took wing,
like you, to distant isobars,
a heavy-bodied albatross
migrating to the great south land.
Now I contemplate the space
your arms once spanned, still resonant -
the chambers of a heart that breaks,
an instrument that yearns for sound…
a clearing in the jungle where ghost-
elephants seek out old trails, a forest
glade where lofty trees once swayed,
a sea bereft of whales…