In this moment I am neither

silence, emptiness even, so

I sit, lift your keylid, everything black

& white, but surely it’s not that simple

how substantial I find you despite

all the years we’ve known each other; I steady

my hands, fan my fingers, arch

then settle in; a high note, mid-range & low

messages from one realm to another, as though I am

a member of a cosmic chorus

when young I loved to remove

your lower front, upper front, top board hinge &

eye your innards: hammers, strings

like a harp’s, a brass frame fit for a car

narrow sheet of felt I controlled with pedals – a curtain

muffling, dulling, but also brightening

kneeling I plucked, made you hum

buzz against my fingernails, thunder too

hail, sometimes the dinking of rain

the main game was when back

on the stool, skinny hip bones hard

to thin cushion, bass octave beneath chord

oh, I know very little, a fore-

shortened alphabet, but still what words & phrases

sometimes sentences – a language

from gut more than head, a heart

bursting through ribcage to play its part

so the whole doesn’t become a mere exercise

now, right now, I am I

& you are you, what we’re creating together – song or suite

maybe a movement – hasn’t happened before

at least not quite in this way, the postie

comes & goes without noticing, though he might just

pause to listen, head cocked

over the road someone’s mowing

obliviously but it doesn’t matter; what matters

is how an E can edge

an F, how one vibration can hold

the hand of another, briefly, before – listen! – a third

– a C – is introducing itself, a lover-

to-be, or a trickster coming to meet them

my eyes close, fingers slow –

this could end sooner than expected

& it does; now a simple pair

reaching for each other, like lorikeets

in parallel flight

I’m in the middle, above the hole

where the key (if I knew where it hides)

slides in to lock, unlock

in this moment I am neither here

nor there; my muscles & bones have dissolved

I am skinned, unskinned

blood emptying onto the carpet

underlay & floor, flooding richly

the under-cavity of the house

in this accumulation of sound

waves in space, I have lost

my existence but found my self

in this ever-fading, I brush up

against nothing; relish this singular affinity –

when it ends I must open my eyes