Piano Dreams

Painting by Debra hurd


Piano Dreams


Sometimes I'm Bobby Short
at the Carlyle Hotel where fur-tipped
women trip in from the cold
on the thick padded arms of their men.
They sparkle with new snow
and old money. But it's me
they want to see. Leaning
into the keys, I play
Autumn in New York,
Misty and I've Got You Under My Skin.
The golden women tilt their heads
with a faraway look in their eyes,
and run jeweled fingers tenderly
over crystal champagne rims.
I launch into
You do Something to Me
and they raise their glasses
and drink.

Sometimes I'm back
in that huge green ballroom
with the white doors
over the restaurant on High Street.
It's late spring – recital time –
and I'm supposed to practice my solo
here for 45 minutes. It's hot
so I'm thinking about the community pool,
not the Mazurka from Les Sylphides,
and how I'll ask my mother
to drop me off there
after lunch.
But then Stephanie Woodruff
from homeroom steps in the white door.
"Oh that's so pretty," she says,
"Don't stop playing."
And she executes
a little faux mazurka step
around the room, laughing –
and I laugh too and play it faster
and better than I ever have.
And she keeps dancing
and I keep playing
and this is how I learn
whatever it is I know about art
and everything I know
about imagination.

And sometimes
I'm my Dad's old friend,
Morty Ackerman
from Albany, who finally got tired
of hauling his combo from one
snowed-in lounge to another,
and took a job at a nudist colony
outside Sarasota. He said clothing
was optional for the staff
and the talent.
He usually wore Bermuda shorts
and a bow tie.
But on New Year's Eve, the story went,
just his "white tie and tail."
He claimed the ladies didn't wait
to be asked onto the dance floor—
they just drifted
up there by themselves,
dipping and twirling like nymphs
around the Steinway.
He said he played like
some kind of crazed piano god.
He said they danced
right into January.

Marcia F. Brown

Posted over on The Writer's Almanac