Abide

Abide

25 Abide Cloudless, birdless, twilight’s blur, a gray somewhere between the lacquer and the keys, the piano’s black pearled on your fingernails, the small half dark, the “Crepuscule” the hands stroll together when the legs cannot, the smell of brass and wood warming half-time beneath rosemary and cream and wine I’m easing toward the plates. Half rest, whole, the chord my great-grandmother’s kitchen, its steam of greens, stew of tomato and okra and sheet music’s cedar, cooked cabbage worn home from the teacher’s house, her hands slicing the onion thin, the left hand, the right, the upright’s wood I must hum after supper already moving, 26 your hands musical in the half-remembered parlor, walking in mine, my hands working with a strength only half, only twice my own. ...