Piano

There's an earlier place I remember very well. One with stairs.

Music while I drifted up alone

to sleep or look out,

the same while I stumbled back down to the world.

Or, days, my mother dusting swabbed

and banged the keys—

She otherwise never

got near it. Never sang. Maybe the way

she'd sort of moan out the word Oklahoma,

where she lived as a girl,

was enough.

It's my father who could go

right through you: Body and Soul, Release Me, Cry Me

a River, big knobby fingers turning

to rain. To drown those blacks and whites.