Macushla

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He came as soon as he could
His uneasy manner in the hall gestured
That it might be best to make haste for the patient

 

 

The air in the front room was cold and filled with piano gases
The polish of half a century
Its musty unvarnished innards leaking their smells out into the house

 

 

He sat himself onto the stool
His ear listening politely to the story so far
His eye sweeping the patient for vital signs

 

 

A bag of tools rattled when he reached to let them down
The polished veneer panel creaked and squeaked
As he prised it from its dowelled clamps

 

 

Allison London and Nordell Crane Dublin
He scanned the ornamental gold and silver font
He played a ten finger cord and listened
The Air vibrating to the short tin-can overture

 

 

He faded into a more intimate laying-on of hands
His bedside manner had filled the cold room with purpose
The warming radiator clicking and ticking like a broken metronome

 

A sudden deep horn blew five times and twice again then once
The right pedal creaking downwards to sustain the jagged note
Throwing uneven pyramids of sound up into the mid-morning air

 

 

The repeating Morse was beginning to sound like a proper staircase
A fitted carpet of melody was hammered softly into all the corners
Followed not long after by a sweet rhyme of running footsteps slowly up and then down

 

 

He put back the breastplate
Turning the dark hidden hooks around and down and into their patient clamps

 

He dipped into the replenished well of the old upright
And pulled on its heartstrings
The finest love song softly first and then
Macushla Macushla your sweet voice is calling
Calling me softly again and again