Piano
bench
The only music we ever
heard
was the symphony of
voices during
Sunday family pasta
dinners, clinking
dishes in the sink,
cabinet doors slapping shut.
So, the piano and bench
posed a question
for years in the living
room. Who sat
there to play? Instead,
they got piled
with books, picture
frames, flower vases.
It wasn't until the old
lady passed
and her grandson hauled
both of them
away that the piano bench
divulged
its secret—scores of
music she once played.
Long ago in the dusty
past her fingers
danced waltzes on the
keys. Her smile
lingered in the pages at
odds with the dour
duty of feeding husband
and family.
There was a different
gaiety once in that house,
not that there wasn't
laughter all those Sundays,
but something she enjoyed
enough to learn
was stored away and
forgotten in that bench.
Until it was moved, the
lid flopping open
in the bed of the truck,
and the wind picking
up the yellowed sheet
music, scattering it across
the lawn, golden leaves from
the family tree.
Eric Chiles is a graduate of I.U. Bloomington. Recently his
poetry has appeared in The Aurorean, Chiron Review, Canary, Main Street Rag,
Rattle, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. His chapbook, "Caught in
Between," is available from Desert Willow Press.