Poetry Friday: Taylor Mali's Undivided Attention

I first saw this poem quite awhile back at Andromeda's A Wrung Sponge.  I loved it then, and I love it now, so it's worth repeating on a Poetry Friday.

The poem begins with the arresting image of a piano dangling out an 8th floor window.  But it's really about what teaching is all about. What makes a good teacher? What makes a great one? What is it that allows someone to "teach like the first snow, falling"?  And if you love that line, be sure to go read the entire poem.


Undivided Attention
by Taylor Mali 

A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,
tied up with canvas straps - like classical music's
birthday gift to the insane -
is gently nudged without its legs
out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street.
It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers' crane,
Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares
and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last
note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,
the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over, and
I'm trying to teach math in the building across the street.

(Read the rest of the poem here.)

Susan Taylor Brown has the roundup today.