Grace Richards

Adagio in Your Absence

Day after day, the piano
sits unplayed, its lustrous,
black-lacquered presence
impressive and imposing
through the French doors.
I’m tempted to enter,

to remember the sure touch
of my fingers on the keys,
the physicality of playing,
once I learned to put my body
into it, the ring of melodious
tones, the spiritual lift

it would bring, and how time
would disappear. I miss
the house we shared, the rarefied
air we lived in, the expansive
space of our lives then. As soon
as I’d finished a piece,

I wanted to play it again.
If I were to lift the top now,
it would cast a shadow,
like the ragged wing
of a dark bird portending
the end of the world,

a shadow the shape of my grief.

Grace Richards has worked in the TV and film industry, taught ESL at the college level, and
during the last few most dramatic years in Eugene, Oregon, has found her poetic voice. Her work has been published by SettingForth.org, Herstryblog.com, Willawaw Journal, and in the
anthology Poems on Poems and Poets (Setting Forth Press, 2016). Her first chapbook, Mid-
Century Modern and Other Poems, will be published by Dancing Girl Press in September 2019.