The Black Upright

My ebony upright piano,
88 keys, 3 golden pedals, and 2 hands.
It's the years of arms aching, hands cramping, and the contemplation of quitting.
Yet it's the sunlight on a Saturday morning hitting the keys,
As your fingers fly, and your spirit soars through a score, breathtaking and dynamic.

An array of strings, hammers, keys and screws,
Is what makes a piano, but truly what a piano is;
An indulgence; your feelings poured into a single song,
Self-expression in a musical story,
Being swept into your own small world in just a few hours of playing,
As in those few hours, does music transcend words.

My upright piano is a soft mellow voice,
A thunderous crack, and a tinkle of bells,
It's the foreboding boom of a sinister low,
And the obscure pitch of a gentle high,
Gliding your hands across a sea of black and white,
The adrenaline of a solo performance,

To play as one with the black upright is a rare blessing,
If I wish hard enough, the piano will respond to me.
The music must ring, let it ring, and let my music reach them.

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This poem was highly commended for Poetry Object 2015

Judge's Notes:
"This poem works in an expansive style, with its long musical lines and its varied and striking metaphors for sound and feeling. It takes much of its energy from the opposition that it sets up between ‘what makes a piano’ and ‘what a piano is’. Its metaphors work so well partly because they work in concert with this sense of truth: not only the detail of the ‘88 keys, three golden pedals, and two hands’; but also the wry truth of ‘arms aching, hands cramping, and the contemplation of quitting’. This works in the poem like counterpoint in a musical composition: different feelings in the poem challenge and complicate each other. Also in its phrasing this poem works with lists and contrasts: the upright piano is ‘a soft mellow voice,/ A thunderous crack, and a tinkle of bells…’

"It is probably true that when poets write about feelings, those feelings have most effect on a reader when they appear to arise out of real circumstances, with the limits and contradictions those circumstances bring. This is the key to the power of this poem: its combination of great rhetorical energy and wry truthfulness. Also, it works subtly with alliteration, assonance and rhythm to set up complicated patterns of sound, equal to its emotional complications. Take that last line, for instance: ‘The music must ring, let it ring, and let my music reach them.’ The warm sound of ‘music must’ makes the word ‘ring’ really ring out. The pattern ‘ring, let’ and then ‘ring, and let’ gives a sense of expansion, as the phrase opens out, and this is why the poem ends with such a sense of delight."
~Lisa Gorton, Poetry Object Judge 2015