Mozart with Kathleen

Image by Ellen Soohoo

Mozart with Kathleen

In honor of your death, my friend Kathleen,
I go to the piano, play half the four-hand Mozart
we worked at for so many years.
The bass is sadder now, because the tune
slid over and off the top of the keyboard
and disappeared in the winter air,
leaving this row of forty ivory slabs
interrupted by black wedges of wood
silent and still as a sculpture garden
closed now for the season. But listen—
the ghost tune still sounds deep
in the caverns of the ear, the ghost hands
still searching for the right fingering.
We'll get it right yet, Kathleen,
but only you and I will ever know or hear.

Bill Holm

Posted over on the Writer's Almanac
"Mozart with Kathleen" by Bill Holm from The Chain Letter of the Soul: New and Selected Poems.