I don’t know why I did it—only that
I resorted to the comfort of counting
to a hundred as I sat among the ferns

in the sun-porch of Miss Marie T. Kamer’s
parents’ home after lessons on the piano
(seventy-five cents for one half-hour

in one of John Thompson’s red books.)
I was waiting for my mother to come
and rescue me from that tiny house

under the gigantic elm trees—my mother,
who wanted to stretch out that half-hour, while
Marie shrank it down to the metronome’s

minute and then retreated to another
part of the house, where her ancient parents
also waited, like specters, for me to leave.

I knew my mother found us hard to bear,
but I did not think she would leave
me there in the darkened porch and beyond

to the silent room where the piano
was closed and the statue of a gold horse
with a clock in its stomach tick-tocked from

the mantle and dolls with dresses made out
of milk filters and pipe cleaners were
propped on the plastic-covered furniture.

I wanted to go home to our kitchen
and the wood-fire stove, to my brothers
playing with Tonka trucks in their pajamas.

I would even go peacefully to bed and
promise not to read under the covers, if only
she’d come…before I counted to a hundred.