Poetry Friday: To an Old Square Piano

Our very old, well worn, beloved piano. 

Just yesterday, I remarked to Ramona how lovely it was to hear her playing the piano again. She loves to play, but we all get either busy or lazy in the summer, and her regular practice time goes out the window. But we are resettling into autumn rhythms and Ramona's music is winding its way through the dining room again, into the kitchen, where I'm working, and thinking, and giving thanks.

To an Old Square Piano
by Robinson Jeffers

Whose fingers wore your ivory keys
So thin—as tempest and tide-flow
Some pearly shell, the castaway
Of indefatigable seas
On a low shingle far away—
You will not tell, we cannot know.

Only, we know that you are come,
Full of strange ghosts melodious
The old years forget the echoes of,
From the ancient house into our home;
And you will sing of old-world love,
And of ours too, and live with us.

Sweet sounds will feed you here: our woods
Are vocal with the seawind’s breath;
Nor want they wing-borne choristers,
Nor the ocean’s organ-interludes.
—Be true beneath her hands, even hers
Who is more to me than life or death.

(This poem is in the public domain.)

~~~~~~~~~~

The round up today is at No Water River.