Music Lesson

Mary Oliver

Sometimes, in the middle of the lesson,

we exchanges places. She would gaze a moment at her hands

spread over the keys; then the small house with its knickknacks,

its shut windows,

its photographs of her sons and the serious husband,

vanished as new shapes formed. Sound

became music, and music a white

scarp for the listener to climb

alone. I leaped rock over rock to the top

and found myself waiting, transformed,

and still she played, her eyes luminous and willful,

her pinned hair falling down –

forgetting me, the house, the neat green yard,

she fled in that lick of flame all tedious bonds:

supper, the duties of flesh and home,

the knife at the throat, the death in the metronome.