Posture

My back slumps down and I recall
The voice of my piano teacher
Telling me that I would last
A great deal longer if I
Thought it like a telephone pole
Erect and firm with arms like wires
Dropping gracefully at my side
And hold my hands as on a ball
With fingers poised atop the keys
To strike with precision.

She had two girls of her own
But I don't know how she made them
Perhaps through some immaculate
Conception of her own creation
That I could never understand.

I don't even think she
Used the bathroom.

I have trouble picturing her face
But I do remember her lips
Stretched tight against her teeth
The mouth dry as she counted time.

And how could there be passion
For sex in that mouth?

And did her husband sweat
As he penetrated
Into that husk of a body
That smelled like my grandmother's
Cashmere Bouquet bathroom?

Were her thighs soft and malleable
To his touch or
Did they part like dry leaves of tissue paper
To reveal an arid parchment
Upon which he could write with his
Forgotten language?

I'm listening to Beethoven's Pathetique
And I am moved.

Was she moved by music?

Or was the extent of her scope
Only Fisher's "Teaching Little Fingers to Play"?

I think of these things when I hear piano music
And I wonder if she actually had children
Or just perhaps ate them to keep herself going.