National Poetry Month — Haiku 20

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I am the lone non-musician at my house.
We have a violinist, a pianist, and a guy who could make music from a soup can and twine if he had to.

It’s not like I’m tone-deaf or anything; I just don’t have a handle on an instrument.

Still, I was as thrilled and satisfied as the rest of them when, this weekend, our great piano search culminated in… a piano! (Small One’s been learning on an electric keyboard for a couple of years and was ready for something with wood and strings and soul…)

But when you’re shopping via Craigslist and estate sales, you don’t necessarily find the find on your first go-round.
Or the third.
Or the fifth.

Still.
Patience is a virtue and we now have the instrument we were meant to have.
There is jockeying around who gets to give it a go.
The dog howls.
The air reverberates.
Even I can’t resist…

Haiku 20

middle C vibrates —
who knows which note should follow?
birds, just passing through?

— Liz Garton Scanlon
    04/20/2009

14 Responses to “National Poetry Month — Haiku 20”

  1. jamarattigan

    Congrats on the piano! You’ve reminded me I need to play mine more often.

    You are a poet. Your heart is your instrument :).

    • liz_scanlon

      Oh, Jama.
      Thank you. That is lovely.
      I’m going to remember that next time I’m feeling left out of the hootenanny…

  3. Anonymous

    Tanita Says 🙂

    Yay for “wood and strings and soul”! I got my piano the same way, and it did take time, but in the end, I have a well-loved instrument — no ability to play it, but I can plink that middle C and wait for the birds.

    You need not play an instrument, when you can sing and dance.

  4. susanwrites

    I thought I had commented on this one. I really like it because I have a love/hate relationship with the piano. Years of lessons but I was never any good at it. Yet in my 20s and 30s I remember going to the piano to pound out simple stuff in-between writing and then going back to the writing.

    I don’t have a piano now, I don’t have any of my old music, but I am tempted to get an old one off of Craigslist just so I can go tap middle C every once in a while.