Piano Lessons II

Outside, the mother sets fire

to broken-off caterpillar nests,

the father practicing a duet

with the daughter

near a window that opens to the lawn.

Fragments of music collect

like a water stain above their heads.

Again, he says quietly, the daughter

counting time against her teeth.

They stare straight ahead, as if driving

through a country they’ve seen so many times

they forget to look at it.

The caterpillars writhe under the pink

torso of dusk, and the mother stands

with a can of gasoline in her hand,

piano notes tangling with oily smoke

before thinning out over treetops,

and she lets them go like that, without

listening too hard, without trying

to piece them together.