Cold Piano Octave

I was what they call a proficient amateur, able to play
polyphonic Bach inventions, brooding Chopin preludes,
chromatic Mozart fantasias, the presto impromptus of Schubert.

I bought my upright Yamaha U-3 before I owned my first car,
and practiced daily, even through graduate school.
Teaching in Japan, I stopped: three years out of touch.

On my return, my weakened fingers
no longer channeled the magic.

I knew what exercises to do, but my lost skill--
so far below the music in my mind--
prevailed over recovering Beethoven’s Moonlight.

My piano, slightly out of tune, wastes away
in the cold room as if in a coma.  Selfish, I hang on
to the imposing walnut finish of a lost spirit,

refusing to relinquish the body out of shame and crazy hope
when, on stray August evenings, I attempt Brahms’ Intermezzo:
struggling to align thick whispered chords

into their rightful grandeur, fumbling tricky accidentals
in the turbulent minor middle,
pursuing with calando a revival of grace in A.

First published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice
(Calando is a musical term meaning slower, softer, fading)