Piano by Patrick Phillips

Piano

Touched by your goodness, I am like   

that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby   

that someone had smashed and somehow   

heaved through an open window.   

And you might think by this I mean I’m broken   

or abandoned, or unloved.   Truth is, I don’t   

know exactly what I am, any more   

than the wreckage in the alley knows   

it’s a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.   

Maybe I’m all that’s left of what I was.   

But touching me, I know, you are the good   

breeze blowing across its rusted strings.   

What would you call that feeling when the wood,   

even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?