On a Piano Discarded by a Pioneer on the Oregon Trail

by Adam Hughes



I read somewhere about families unburdening
their wagons early on in the journey -
pots and pans and furniture lining the ruts
somewhere before the banks of the Platte.
 
I picture a lone traveler - I don’t know why
he’s alone, but I choose to think it’s because he wants
to be. But he doesn’t. I think there’s probably a lover
back in Cincinnati. Maybe a creditor in Springfield.
But either way, he’s alone.
 
I think he approaches the piano, upright and scratched,
the only specimen of its kind for hundreds of miles,
the way a horse approaches a newly fallen tree -
hesitant, as if at any moment it could come to life
or throw forth some spark of life that it conceals within
its belly of wood, ivory, and the resonance of memory.
 
He reaches out slowly, curiously, maybe his chest
rumbles with something resembling laughter.
It’s not real laughter of course,
because the only people who laugh alone are insane.
That what he thinks, anyway. No judgement on my part.
 
The keys make a sound like the keys of a piano
are supposed to make. This surprises him, but he’s not sure
why. Perhaps he expected them to be broken
like all things that go on voyages and die
before finishing them. He reaches to play another
 
but stops. He walks away, humming
that one pitch. I picture him as long as I can until
he disappears on the horizon and the piano
fills with grass, its belly full with one more note.




​Hideous the Scars of Beauty and I, Impaled

​​for my daughter


the horses’ eyes are sad, but not
sorrowful—they look not with fear,
but with the experience of the long married--
they’re waiting patiently for the stars to fall
so they might eat them off the tips of the grass

do not cry about things beyond your fingertips--
the deaths of a thousand glinting wasps--
the frosted, the wilted, the broken, the rheumy-eyed--
the world is not dying—it is shedding its skin

do not fear the undergrowth beyond
the first row of trees—it’s dark but many have walked
there before you—their footsteps still crunch
if you stop your breathing long enough to listen--
you’re never far from something beautiful

when it rains for days, and it appears God forgot
to separate the waters that week, remember me
wherever I am and know that I tried--
the rain doesn’t win or lose—it just drops
when it’s told to drop, like baby robins from the nest,
some flying, some falling, all changed


​