Beethoven's face is watching mine,
but the metronome defies me like a creature
breathing with a wooden will of its own.
And she of perfect pitch and hands intones,
Take your time.

These exercises drain me, but I enjoy
the feel of ivory, smooth and cold beneath
my fingers scratched from climbing trees.
She often shared how this soft ivory, the very best,
came to her--ordered straight from Africa

by her father who was, as everyone knows,
a general like his father before him
who fought in the War of Northern Aggression.
Exactly half an hour, a click of the brass lamp
declared release. I'd slip out

and run past the cemetery, then skirt the edge
of an oak-pine forest. I'd push through our door,
clutching a piece like Moonlight Sonata
in a contortion of elbows and new breasts. Then
back to my room where I didn't even notice

the desk or chair or my small terrier begging
for greetings. I'd land on my bed and study the ceiling,
see a panoramic African plain with elephants thundering,
dust clouds suffocating those incredible creatures,
all of them with tusks missing.

From A Poetry Break (Ocean Publishing, 2004).
Used with the author's permission.