The Pianist

Divorced, my mother kept the piano

so one day, I could have returned to her.

Elizabeth Bishop says, write the loss

to right it, but I don’t know whose to right.

One day, I leave you without us knowing

and wander, start to write a sestina.

I ask loss to write me. A sestina

refuses, unlike my old piano

who already carries my love, knowing

silence is part of the song. “You’ll hear her

meaning, if you listen to it the right

way,” they advised in reviews, but a loss

has a hard time being other than loss.

Days are wild across me, a sestina

cannot carry my fingers’ tremors. “Right,”

the pianist murmurs, “a piano

remembers everything in your life, her

body holds you more than you, her, knowing

you better than you do. Always knowing

that knowing is not enough.” The day’s loss,

a still thunderstorm. I remember her

better as I forget, a sestina

written trembles more than the piano.

How do you write to keep going? The right

way, always moving—there is nothing right

in the way lines break, already knowing

the lack passes through me, a piano

being moved into a new house. The loss

entered us when you read the sestina

I never finished, still thinking of her.

She spoke to me too long ago, with her

voice almost gone, as if nothing could right

the books she never read, the sestina

never written, and as she dies, knowing

what is to come better than I, my loss

fills the room, and I play the piano.

You never knew her, but even knowing

could not put us right: we must live the loss

through a sestina, not a piano.