The Woman at the Steinway


A guest of the Korean pianist,
I was a woman in the pews
seated a few aisles down
where glass-stained light rippled
through the movement
of a nearby summer’s willows. 

Her entire body tumbled through her fingertips
summoning Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6 in F major…
the awakening, the brook, the country folk.

Finally, in the thunderstorm,
her bare arms
channeling bolts,
rumblings
enough to shake entire timbers,
I became her—at the Steinway
silently watching from under the eaves
with my father
who was teaching me
to stand in a storm.

Somehow, my father, you understand
I became
the woman at the Steinway.