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Red Chair at the Piano Recital
A red chair under pecan trees _ outside the glass door... . In September the children's notes were single and slow, songs so simple we could barely call them music. But now the first-year students color the walls with "Blue Danube''s and "Green Boogie"s, while the chair asserts its red space in the April sun. The children's curved fingers find the white and black notes steadily, accurately. The lap of the chair glows flame over the lawn. When the kids are finished the piano teacher plays just one piece for us, a Brahams intermezzo, and the music becomes all the chairs that ever held us, all the chairs that ever waited, all the chairs we ever had to leave without saying goodbye while the red metal chair under the new leafing trees sits red, red in the green garden. Even after we've walked out the door for punch and cake, no one sits in the red chair that strums its own upright, unrusted ostinato steady as oceans, a pulse around which we move.