165 Readings
Aubade
When the house burned they
could find no photographs
no crisped edges, no smoked
eyes or shadowed cheekbones.
Past the bent wire gate
beneath the singed elms,
the chimney’s foot heaped
with bricks, on the first day
they found only the ruined piano,
silted with ash, raked like a storm
driven schooner. Rain hissed
through the wreckage and deep
below they heard the dense crack
of hot stones bursting. Weeks
later she found birds nesting
in the instrument, a single
convolvulus vine shot in heady
spiral along the chimney, bricks
glowing. That night in his
kitchen her brother smoked
and smoked and would not sit
and in her sleep she heard
the sift of sparrows’ feet
along the sounding board
over the black trees’ soughing,
comforting as a scratched record.
In the morning he came
with her but they found only
the last snapped string,
feathers, a little blood.
Posted 12/31/15
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