The Poetry Marathon

I once played The Wild Horseman on
the used piano my mother
bought for my lessons.

But didn’t like my teacher so
I quit before I could play as well
as she did.

It was an upright piano. Used. We
signed it inside the cover, back of where
you place your music.
That piano moved three times. From
the upstairs flat n Calvert, to the house
on Oregon and
back upstairs to the flat on Fairfield.

They left it there when my grandparents
died and they moved 300 miles
away.

Decades later my grown son and
a friend went
exploring  the house on Oregon, missing half
the roof, doors boarded up or
boards torn
off.

They found
an abandoned piano in
the wreckage. It wasn’t ours though.
Someone else
had moved on and left it
behind.

It's always summer, always
hot. The sky is always blue. 
There's a barn.

Behind the house, back
of the garden were the
fields.

My cousin Barbara and I would walk
through the grass, never quite 
reaching the woods.

We are always young. So
much of our
lives yet to be lived. So
long, long ago.

Promises kept or
broken as the miles disappear
in the rear view mirror.

Time to sleep approaches.
Distances are
closer
than they
appear.

I open the front door.
The air is already hot, humid, 
close. A watery sun barely makes
patches of light on the green
trees overhead before it's 
gone.

In a fallen brown magnolia leaf
A few drops of rain have puddled. A
damp patch outside the door and the

black car stops in front of the house and
drops a young man off. He opens the garage door
across the street and sits
waiting.

faint memory of a crash of thunder
in the middle of the night are all
there is to show that it rained.