Stephen’s Keys

Under haggard stairs a door opens without keys

Crinkled sheets and puckered cases around the placid piano

Like a drooping neocortex, crowded with too many wrinkles,

Too many thoughts at once. When it’s time to hush

Dad drags gaunt fingers through a lawn of unkempt hair.

Silence between cups of coffee, thinking, he crosses his knees.

Morning sun slaps his Danish skin red, from cheeks to knees.

NPR sounds squirm from a silver box and dad looks for his keys.

Considering a song for class while shaving spiny hairs

From a dapper chin, he forgets a chord and steps back to the piano.

Students strain to catch his blue notes like droplets: splash. They hush,

Feeling each vibration wobble and rest in the plush tissue of wrinkled

Lungs. What is reserved between his wrinkles?

Outwardly, he lives in his mom’s skyscraper body, equipped with snapping knees.

She gave him blood tainted, whiskey brimming sights and he hushed.

Each consumed capsule and cigarette grappled and caged with a key;

Boyhood bound and suspended by the taut strings of a piano.

Music birthed relief, spreading from the pit of his gut to the ends of his hairs.

Obstructing the screaming, Merle Haggard’s voice hushed

Dad down. Loretta Lynn reached through the radio to caress his hair. 

Sound sleep came by dreams of Lennon’s fingers on keys.

New fervor unearthed through the grooves between Al Green’s wrinkles.

Hiding from clashing shields of kin, he put his face between knees

And between squeezed lids saw glimpses of his first piano.

Dad left Idaho for Boston, Boston for the Midwest, grass and gravel in his hair.

He harmonized with the engine and rhymed with the wrinkles

In the leather steering wheel, looking for somewhere to put his piano.

Chancing Chicago, he learned to sing. Guitar propped on knee,

Shouting at recollection with perfect intonation. Losing his car keys,

He decided to stay. The city brought stillness, made his mind hush.

Tonight pink and blue lights splatter him speckled, at the piano.

Bubbles of sound expand and explode, floating over one hundred hushed

Mouths. A fanfare of lyrics march on, making the stiffest knees

Chatter, like sweaty palms and chewed nails and hairs

Standing skyward. He smiles, exposing new wrinkles.

Fingers dance like the Bolshoi across a floor littered with keys.

Leaving the bar, dad reaches for his keys. Lingering notes sew, with hair-thin

Stitches, between the delicate wrinkles in his brain. Home, at his piano,

Rubbing tired knees, he breathes a limp “hush,” inwards.