SAMPLE POEMS
A House with Music in It, II
I’m twelve,
coming home with friends,
bounding up
onto the porch
in the Indiana
summer afternoon,
crickets and cicadas
making a loud
whirring with their wings,
sweat sticking
to forehead, shirt and neck,
baseball glove
under my arm.
I stop when I hear
the piano from inside,
turn toward my friends,
shake my head,
pull open the door,
shut it behind me
without a click,
step into
the cool dark of the house,
my father at the piano
straight ahead,
humming as he plays,
every now and then
a “Damn it”
as he misses a note.
He doesn’t pause,
doesn’t look up,
doesn’t change his rhythm,
as I tiptoe through,
past the table
covered with
his important work,
the air conditioner
behind it
humming its own tune.
I climb the stairs,
trying to avoid
the ones that creak.
The music—
something of Beethoven,
loud and passionate—
follows me
down the hall
to the door
of my room;
I step inside,
shut it out,
open the windows,
toss my mitt aside,
turn on the radio,
smile a little
at Chuck Berry singing
“Roll over, Beethoven,”
flop down on the bed,
pull out my
toy baseball game,
and go on
being twelve
in nowhere Indiana
on a sticky
summer afternoon.
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Down the Stairs
My father’s going
downstairs to bed,
my mother helping.
It looks like a disaster
waiting to happen—
tied together by a rope
running from waist to waist—
like the invisible tether
which has bound them for so long
neither can remember
a time before
when they were free
to fall on their own,
not pull the other with them.
She’s done this since
the time he took a tumble
and it was hours
before she got him up.
At each step
his foot searches the air
for the one below,
my mother above, waiting;
after he’s stood
not moving for a while,
reminding him,
“You’re going down the stairs,
the right foot next.”
At the landing
there’s a chair
he sits on,
shuts his eyes.
She rouses him with
“Only nine more to go,”
puts her arm under his,
tries to lift him.
For a moment it’s not clear
if he will make it.
“You have to help me here,” she says,
“I can’t do this by myself,”
and when he stands,
points him down the stairs,
puts his hand on the railing,
steps back
till the rope
is taut between them,
and on they go.
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Love Notes
She comes home
from a morning out,
finds on the kitchen counter
a note in his shaky hand:
“I love you,”
her full name
on the line below,
and, beneath that,
taking up half the page,
his name, signed,
first and last,
as if he was sixteen
wanting to let
the world know
what he’d discovered
and couldn’t keep secret.
She finds the same note
all over the house:
on the bathroom counter,
the dining room table,
one beside him in the study
where he sits at the computer.
She comes up behind him,
puts her arms
around his shoulders,
slides her cheek
next to his—
“I love you too,”
saying his name, first and last,
and nuzzling his ear,
smiles as she adds her own,
the one her parents gave her
and the one they’ve shared
for all these years.
He turns his head toward her.
In his look she sees
he doesn’t know
what she’s talking about.
She picks the note up
that sits beside him,
kisses it,
holds it in front
for him to see—
still no response,
his face as blank
as the computer screen
he’s been staring at.
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My Parents’ Hands
In the night
he makes his way
back to the piano,
sits on the bench in silence,
no one else around,
looks at the music
open before him;
it makes no sense,
its black marks floaters
drifting this way, that;
every time he blinks
more appear
till the air
is filled with them.
He shuts the light off,
sits there in the dark,
fingers fluttering to
a lifetime of
sonatas and concertos
that echo in his head.
His wife beside him
he did not hear come in
leans over,
starts to speak;
he shushes her.
“Bend closer,” he wants to say;
“Put your ear next to mine,
and you can hear it too.”
Instead, she takes the hand
that joined with hers
years before,
kisses the fingers,
raises it to her face,
holds it against her skin,
blue veins on the back
pulsing against her cheek.
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Visiting My Father
I go into my father’s room,
lay my hand on his.
“Hi, sweetie,” he says,
eyes shut, voice strong.
It’s a surprise,
a green sprig in the desert;
he hasn’t spoken in days.
“No,” I say,
thinking he means my mother—
he never calls me that.
“She’s in the other room.
This is your son.”
And though I stay there
hand on his
twenty minutes longer,
he says nothing more,
but goes on sleeping,
or whatever it is he does,
eyes shut, to pass his days.
And then,
the person who never
opens his eyes,
while I am standing there
holding his hand,
opens them, wide,
looks right at me,
as if he knows me
and is surprised, or glad.
“Remember me,” I say,
“I’m your son,”
saying the nickname
only he calls me.
His mouth opens part way,
as if he’s going to speak,
or smile, or both—
then nothing—
it stays open,
opens wider.
His eyes close,
his mouth follows,
his breathing settles in.
Later
he opens his eyes
even wider
and stares at me,
says in answer
to my question,
“Yes, I’m warm enough—
Don’t squeeze my hand too tight.”
And then,
with my hand
still squeezing his,
but not so tight,
he brings his other over,
fingers thin and bony—
paws at the air with it
until it finds
what it is looking for
and settles down on mine.
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My Father, Humming, II
I’m at my father’s piano,
playing a piece
he used to play,
but not the way
he played it,
not, he’s sure, the way
Herr Beethoven intended.
He’s hearing it,
not sleeping as he often is,
and he’s not happy with it.
Before, he would have
yelled out “Stop!”
or booed, or yowled,
“You’re trying to kill me!”
He’s not saying much these days.
Before I’ve played five notes,
he’s choking, loud and drastic.
Stop now, I think,
call 9-1-1,
then rush up,
see what I can do.
The caretaker is there—
she’s raised the bed,
he’s sitting upright,
nothing else to do,
let him work it through.
I keep playing.
The choking gets
louder, more alarming,
a rattle in the throat,
as if this is the end.
My stomach tightens,
but I don’t stop—
and this goes on a while,
duet for a son
playing on his father’s piano
while his father
gasps his last.
But then the choking lets up,
gets quieter,
changes to a cough,
more like the clearing of a throat,
and stops.
He’s still,
and I’m still playing.
I take a breath, relax;
as I go on, I hear,
so faint at first
I’m not sure what I’m hearing:
mmm mmmm, mmm mmmm—
he’s humming, tunelessly,
along with me,
the way he used to
when he was playing.
It gets stronger, surer;
there’s no mistaking it—
and we go on like this,
the two of us,
making music,
until the piece is done.
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Requiem
In my father’s music room,
his music on his desk,
his glasses next to it,
as if he took them off
a moment ago
and in another
will put them on again;
in the room above,
where he slept so long,
the bed already gone.
From his piano
the opening notes
of “Moonlight”
hang near the ceiling,
against the walls,
penetrating
wood and stone,
so strong,
a stranger walking in
would feel them and stop,
unable to go on—
vibrations of
the metal strings
reverberating
lower and lower
till they have reached a place
ear can’t hear
but heart still knows.
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End Notes
I sit down at
my father’s piano.
The first slow notes
of Beethoven’s “Moonlight”
echo in the room
till the air’s alive with them,
striking to the bottom of the heart
and lower,
down to the core.
Here, in this room,
through these keys, these notes,
these fingers and this heart,
what he gave me
years ago
I now give back to him;
and if I listen
as I play,
I still can hear
his spirit humming
loud and clear.
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