The second time I heard him play, he sat
facing his windows overlooking the river.
Because a former student, lovely and
softspoken, said she’d love to hear, he leaned
over the keys, closed his eyes, and began,
the music full of dark and minor chords,
dissonances rolling along the keyboard,
stones arrayed to articulate, some way
I couldn’t say, the harshest sounds, and yet
the most melodic. A final flourish, and he
was finished, the closing statement dying deep
inside the instrument’s marrow. He remained
motionless on the bench, allowing the silence
to grow into a deeper quiet taking
us over, and the room. We didn’t move
until his nod, nearly indiscernible,
released us, and we came back into the space,
gathering ourselves, our voices, and sense
of where we were.
The first time, much earlier,
occurred in Florida, days hazy with
humidity, alligators lolling
on the lawns, fifteen-minute thunderstorms
every afternoon, and lizards flaring
red banners from their necks. I hesitated
to knock while he played Satie, sitting, I knew,
among the gray stone walls of his living room.
Muted by distance and the heavy door,
the otherworldly whisper music—the kind
that I imagine spirits of the dead
performing—came from everywhere and nowhere
at once. I could have stood out there all night
with that music wafting my way. Abruptly
it stopped, a crystalline silence followed,
and the door opened although I never knocked.
Jerry Harp has published four books of poems, including Creature (2003) and Spirit Under Construction (2017). His work appears in Boulevard, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Laurel Review, Notre Dame Review, and Pleiades, among other places. He teaches at Lewis & Clark College.
