Susannah Habecker © 2018
by Anne Cheilek
Instrumental: A Ghost Ship Elegy
—after Robert Pinsky
The harp, the pins, the action, the letoff,
the keys, the crown, the frame, the fallboard,
the hammers, the dampers, the bridge, the belly:
I confess the whole of the bride exquisite,
designed for the wages of song, now priced out,
rendered homeless. Baldwin. Bechstein. Broadwood.
Chickering. Swick. Wing and Son. This heart
made of a single Sitka spruce spotted by a redeye
lumberjack the day his girl run off, saw her
standing 150-feet tall with her sisters
in the glacial till of Washington State, delimbed
by a high climber, so fat she took all day to fell,
leaving a hungry stump and a hundred-year gap
in the wind. Down she skidded to the millpond,
quarter-sawn, stacked, slowly seasoned until
pound for pound stronger than steel.
Trimmed, cured, crowned, and now cast out
on a street corner, stripped and dumped
in a back alley. The tuning. The tempering.
The tones. The partials. The harmonics.
It would have ended there if not for a
certain savior, a curator of disaster
with 10,000 square-feet jerry-built
for the next chapter. This too proved
instrumental, how he loved to collect
multitudes—curios, knickknacks,
refinished missions of wood. How
hundreds were crammed into
the warehouse, lined up against
the walls, a glorious freakshow,
a labyrinth of salvage picked up
in cafes and junkshops. Hupfeld.
Kirschner. Knabe. Re-homed and waiting
to be set alight, waiting for some young
Rachmaninoff or Liszt. Not this unforeseen
prodigy hot at the keys, with fingers so fierce
vintage strings ping off pegs, so fiery
old elephant ivories curl up
like fists of the dying.
Caught on the stairs. Lost
in the halls. Cornered on the
second floor. Out of air.
The pine. The walnut. The oak. The maple.
The case. The lyre. The pedals. The trap.
The spark. The soundboard. The song.
Kindling.