Silent Music

Silent Music

By Floyd Skloot Floyd Skloot
My wife wears headphones as she plays
Chopin etudes in the winter light.
Singing random notes, she sways
in and out of shadow while night
settles. The keys she presses make a soft
clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts,
golden cotton fabric ripples across
her shoulders, and the sustain pedal clicks.
This is the hidden melody I know
so well, her body finding harmony in
the give and take of motion, her lyric
grace of gesture measured against a slow
fall of darkness. Now stillness descends
to signal the end of her silent music.

Reprinted from “Prairie Schooner,” Volume 80, Number 2 (Summer, 2006) by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 2006 by the University of Nebraska Press. Floyd Skloot’s most recent book is “The End of Dreams,” 2006, Louisiana State University Press.

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Poet Floyd Skloot

POET’S REGION U.S., Northwestern

Subjects Marriage & Companionship, Music, Arts & Sciences, Living

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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SUBJECT Marriage & Companionship, Music, Arts & Sciences, Living

POET’S REGION U.S., Northwestern

Poetic Terms Free Verse

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Originally appeared in Poetry magazine.

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