She is old. Long ago she fled
an old country of lace curtains
and blue Delft Spode,
where a midnight knock on the door
opened to a sound-proof room.
Within the cranial vault
of the concert hall
her fingers the color of bone pause
above the black and white keys
gravid with Chopin’s preludes.
The pause grows. It hangs
like a ripening drop of dew
prismed with a story
as old as they say time is
before she lowers her fingers.
Mike Dillon lives in a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle, from where he writes poetry and essays. He is a retired community newspaper publisher who walks the beach and dreams of an America where everyone has read Henry David Thoreau.