1st Place Winner of the Summer Poetry Contest: Building a Piano: A Metaphor - Andrea E. Johnson

You find, on an Aleutian island, a large Sitka

spruce. Though not listed as threatened, it has stood

for centuries. This you weigh on an imaginary brass

two-arm balance scale, the opposite metal pan bearing

a pile of passed-down music, fragile, falling apart,

inscribed by your great-uncle, a Norwegian

piano tuner, a man you never knew; holding, too,

all the (imagined) destroyed music belonging, once ,

to all the unknown souls on your Armenian family tree.

Lost, all those generations, lost. Lost, even, their names,

names that your Grandpa Thomassian never, not once,

spoke. Lost in 1915. Lost in the genocide of World War One.

After you plane the spruce heartwood, shaping it to look

like the sole of your foot from heel to arch, you stretch

across it 230 strings of Swedish steel, securing

them with rust-resistant tuning pins and a cast iron

bridge. Next, with the hornbeam you felled

in eastern Canada, you carve 88 hammers and cover

their heads with your own felted lambs-

wool. Then, you fashion 88 repetition levers

for the hammers’ rapid action. When you finish,

you turn outward, to others, scouring the field,

and find Daniel, a piano restorer,

who has a complete set of 88 Bavarian spruce

keys, laminated with hard plastic, like new,

for sale. You wish they were ivory, but ivory 

is illegal. You know that horrendous history,

herds of elephants slaughtered in the Belgian Congo.

You buy the keys from Daniel. With care, you align

the keyboard and the levers. Taking the hard

rock maple you once harvested in Maine,

you build the outer cabinet. Then,

Daniel tunes

the piano. Already, you own your great-uncle’s walnut

swivel stool, over a hundred years old. Already,

you have the music. Now it is time

to practice, to find balance, to play

your own interpretation. You hear

the piano say,

Make each note round and clear, each tone, a bell… 

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Andrea E. Johnson is retired from a long career in public health. She participates now in several writers groups, both poetry and memoir. Her love of the natural world, music, cultural heritage and history makes its way onto the page. She lives on the edge of the Twin Cities in Lake Elmo, Minnesota.