Lent 17: Piano Lesson

I don’t even own a copy of Eva Salzman’s New & Collected book, Double Crossing yet, but I enjoyed this poem about playing music (badly) and the start of summer so much that I wanted to share it. I suspect that when I finally get the book, I’ll want to share some more.

     Piano Lesson

     It couldn’t have been my Beethoven Bagatelle.
     My jagged spring from C to higher C,
     with E a stepping stone, did not go well.
     But something seemed to set those Martins free.

     Summer thread unspools the weathered barn
     and then re-sews the rafters overhead;
     although what seemed like joy must be alarm
     maybe not at me, at my Bagatelle instead.

     Heart of hearts, I willingly mis-heard.
     My fingers dreaming fast but dragged along
     had struck a bargain and I paid in birds
     imprisoned by a crisis, not by song,

     for shame: they soothed the eighth-notes’ drunken lurch
     Birds, old barn: Be my confessor’s church.

See the intro/roundup.