Learning Piano at Age Fifty-Seven

Ten fingers, booted in my heavy thoughts,
Track step by step through cavernous terrain.
Don't blink! My chi finds comfort in these notes--
The score that maps the one piece I can play.
Yet clumsy tones weigh down with groans and slips.
I pray for sense beneath suspended keys,
And wince before a metronomic whip:
Eins, zwei. Too slow. Eins. Wrong! Drei, vier. Wrong! Cease!
Now thinking breathes and muses move my hands.
They know well-tempered keyboards like their home.
I sense the grace to learn like a young man.
I sense the charms of what I might have known.
For six or seven measures, muses play.
Then I resume, spelunking life away.