My first husband had bones like a Russian ballet star
a face so Slav my Nana couldn’t look him in the eye –
everyone knows the Poles were worse than the Germans.
He nursed grudges, kept a pistol in the sock drawer.
Once, near the end, one of us aimed it at the other;
I no longer remember who played whom.

You could blame my first piano teacher, his cigarette lighter
balanced on the back of my hand to teach me serenity
while, out of sight, my mad fingers worked the keys.
Then he brought in Chopin  (the Nocturnes) and from there
it was but a short hop to rubato: permission to swoon!
The kind of revelation that can bring a girl to ruin.

Then came the Mazurkas — two minutes,
rarely three, of heedless, headlong, syncopated flight
from light to dark, back again, and it’s done.
Even butterflies live for a week, but Mazurkas
are a one-night stand. Burn it all, they say,
nothing can be saved and nothing is destroyed.