Poetry: Reverie at the piano (age 8)

When Stultz and Bauer's Upright Grand

showed me its ivory teeth,

I'd poke in singles

then in clumps of sound —

I knew my stroking broken tusks

could never make it thump me with its trunk,

or tickling its white teeth could make it bray —

oh, I could pound its pedals

without dread of elephantine

vengeance on my toes,

but then, but then —

was the monster really

dead?

On auburn afternoons

when John S. Williams

spelled out "Witches Dance" or

"At the Movies Where the Villian..."

musky smells would sometimes

stalk the air...

Fearing that my hands

had carelessly uncaged

a behemoth, I'd flee

the stomping ground

and turn and turn

page-after-page

after-page-after-page

in search of

scales, of

major

scales.

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Grayce Scholt is a retired English professor from Mott College who wrote art reviews for the Flint Journal. Her book of poetry, Bang! Go All the Porch Swings, is available online from Amazon and locally at Pages Bookstore in downtown Flint.