Slow

TFR Home Page

Contents

Prev. Page

Comments

Slow

by Martin Louis Woodside

The piano is slow and it claims
not to know what’s going on
how we got stuck here.
The piano has been resigned
to this room with a ceaseless
whipped dog of a melody;
it claims
that it loves me.

Folded, unfolded, encrusted
in folds, in a rustle of cloth
some coarse, worn material
a nun’s habit, a soldier’s
pea coat casting coteries
of color sifted and shafted;
it claims
not to know.

The author writes: The second stanza is meant to be more abstract though definitely building off the feeling and more importantly the sound of the first. In the first there's an image and a sound created in specific space( the piano in the room). In the second stanza I wanted to nurture the feeling and build on the sound while removing it from the image and the space: kind of an opening up or blooming of the music, a re-imagining of that feeling or sound which still ends up a bit removed.