Morning in ViennaMidsummer Piano Lesson

My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back
off to the side of the piano.
I sit up straight on the stool.
He begins by telling me that every key
is like a different room
and I am a blind man who must learn
to walk through all twelve of them
without hitting the furniture.


I feel myself reach for the first doorknob.


Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano.
It is the largest, heaviest,
and most beautiful object in this house.
I pause in the doorway just to take it all in.
And late at night I picture it downstairs,
this hallucination standing on three legs,
this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.

First and last stanza of
Billy Collins' poem "Piano Lessons"
"The Art of Drowning"
University of Pittsburg Press

Images © by Merisi
Link:
-> Billy Collins at Poetry Foundation