for Hannah

It was the one tangible you brought home
from the city, an armful of instrument,
bellows and keys and buttons and a smell
of antique lubrication, and a sound that poured
undiminished through solid walls.
You sat in your chair with its straps around your shoulders
teaching yourself to play,
determined to do different things differently
in the tradition of your people,
mixed-breeds from a dozen lands.
You sat as at a dance
with your partner on your lap, but it was also
a baby you were coaxing to speak.
I carried you that same way long ago,
your infant head under my chin, your chest against my chest,
my arms around you, my little marsupial.
I have photos of us like that. Mother and child.
And more…I can feel it physically…my arms still ache…
it’s like phantom pain after an amputation,
phantoms being real.
         You left it here with us,
the accordion, debating
whether to sell it, or to indulge yourself
by retaining such a large artifact, as it troubled no one
tucked back in your closet
in its battered, leather-covered case,
though neither was it useful.
Except it came to us at such a time:
you sat alone with it for hours
before your open curtains,
the music book awash in winter light,
hesitations, repetitions, small masteries,
and beyond you
snow passed through the sieve of the pine boughs
with the delicacy of grace notes.