Once, you lifted the long roof
and bent your head
close to us; there was no notation for this.
Our stillness — stillness,
which was movement gone silent — made us
seem to listen, and so you sang to us
out loud — sang
into us, and we shook,
which made us ring, as though with sympathy.
One ringing noise
answered all your vowels.
You could be reminded of indifference.
Or the beautiful echo could be a beautiful echo.
This poem “The Piano Strings” originally appeared in Emerging Scholars 2. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 228-229 (Spring/Summer 2016): 72.
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