Piano on fire
in the courtyard of this old mill
where the train used to roll right inside.
How the piano got here we don’t know
but now it’s on fire. Seems right.
The finish bubbling, the big strings snapping.
This calls for a chaos pianist.
The bench is over there,
not blazing;
a brave musician could do something
with all this: play, perhaps,
a train song on fire.
Pull the bench up,
not too close, hit those
scalding keys,
the piano detuning the whole time.
Whoever knows
how to orchestrate melody
from such destruction
is going to do fine here.
We don’t know how the piano got here
but until it’s consumed
we know exactly
how to make it sing,
how to bring the ghost train
back to life, smoke-strung,
resurrected long enough
to fly off the rails
and tear them up as it goes;
how to call that an anthem
and build a nation around it
as we warm our hands
on the last of the piano’s embers.
