Two Men and a Truck are here to haul our
piano away to a nice woman’s
house, who’s agreed to move it to own
it, so her children can learn to play. An hour
early, two men in the truck pass a pipe
while on my open porch I read
the sports page. I see ribbons of smoke peel
from the open truck window. The ripe
ember glows like a star and the stink
gathers on the porch like a nimble music.
Getting stoned to move an old piano
seems like a solid plan. Actually, I think,
in the small world of moving pianos, a bit
of ingenuity helps to carry the load.
Michael Catherwood’s books are Dare, If You Turned Around Quickly, and Projector. He’s a former editor at The Backwaters Press and has been an associate editor at Plainsongs since 1995. Recent poems have appeared in Common Ground, I-70 Review, and Pennsylvania English.