dk

A Mother’s Hand, Memorized

At three years old
I heard my mother’s hands
touch the fingers of Bach
with the strings of her cello.
They played three songs at once
with ten fingers on four strings—
a miracle greater than the mystery
of Heffalump and Winnie-the-Pooh.
She tied those strings to me by
showing me how notes are words
made from the prayers of angels,
and that songs are hugs from God.

At age four I crawled at her feet
below keyboards of a pipe organ,
and sounds like monster lungs growled
through my knees and into my spine.
She called them fugues, but I knew
them as the songs of a god called Mom.

At age eight I paused between pages
of Mysterious Island to hear her cello
elevate a song called The Swan
up the stairs into my patch of ocean
to teach me how graceful birds
could sing songs of life after death.

By age thirty I read Notes from Underground
as I faced the author’s home across the Atlantic,
while she tossed a Beethoven sonata
into the clouds over the Pacific Ocean.
I don’t need a recording to hear that again.

Now, as I scratch
my way into this poem,
something in me remembers
every tone from her fingers.
No distance is too far
if you know it by heart.