Piano Lessons
Miss Laura Wilkins taught me
piano, harmony and counterpoint
semibreves and minims, crotchets,
quavers and the like. She was thin
and wore silk dresses flower-patterned
and high-necked. Her two spaniels
came to greet me, clicking nails
on hardwood floors. And the floors
were always polished to a burnished
golden brown and we sat on splendid
armchairs and drank tea from china cups.
I would play and she would scold me,
“You must practice more”, she’d say,
shake her head without disturbing
her coiffeur of sculpted waves. In the
air, a trace of perfume, mostly lavender
or rose. And the lamps cast cozy
islands of warm light around the room
where a child of shtetl parents
sampled goyish once a week.
(Honorable Mention in the 2005 Poetica Annual Contest) |