Where are they now, old piano teachers
who marked time as I marched to minuets
and gavottes around their living rooms.
Miss Gaylord and Miss Perry and Miss Leach,
old spinsters even then, who spun nothing

but time’s unravelling on their stiff batons.
Each one endured
a year, then disappeared,
as if my rushed timings,
my inattentions, murdered them.

Sometimes, their wizened fingers startled me
with dexterous runs across the keys,
arpeggios appassionato. They’d 
clip the metronome’s one wing of time
and shut it up in its silver case.

Other times, they’d gaze out cold
windows, the sharp staccato
of their fingers on the pane.
I thought them old overcoats
hung all week in cedar closets,

aired out when I came to play.
And play I did, for forty years,
until time collapsed on my hands,
on my intentions and inattentions.

Now I open the old piano bench to find
their music books, their scrawled
instructions: Pay attention to time.
Hand placement. Correct fingering.
And timing, timing, timing!

Now I want to complete the lesson.
Now I want to read their handwriting
in all its doubleness. My hand-placement
on their hips, leading them around the room.
My timing impeccable, for they’ve waited,

oh, forty years for this dance.
I take up the metronome’s one wing,
clip it shut, and improvise the rhythm.
Now I want to uncouple them
from the adagio’s slow unwinding.

Let them step lightly to a scherzo,
at ease in their bodies. Let them dance
with their secret musical lovers.
Or with me, their secret
stand-in for the evening.