Beth Goobie
DAUGHTER OF THE A-MINOR SCALE
The A minor scale is liquid melancholy flowing across the keyboard,
hands of slanted autumnal light. Outside, trees scatter amber notes,
song of some other girl’s happiness as I sit, seventeen and hostage
to this piano bench and your bearded-teacher commands.
Daddy, we thought we would always be locked into each other;
I was your baby grand and you would play me,
that old classic with its predictable chord sequences
fingertipped onto a daughter’s growing child body.
After I left you, the A minor scale followed me everywhere.
Home is a place you’ve never been and always are.
The years droned on, random moments scattering me amber-gold
and the A minor scale had me again, the minor third with its perfect agony
calling to the angel in the major seventh, that G# trying to lift free –
child’s ghost hovering dutiful above the piano
and watching her body like a tune she couldn’t remember,
because it was your Magnificat, Daddy, all the notes
owned by your fingertips until I orphaned myself,
smashed learned chord sequences and released into cacophony.
Fury will take you further than melancholy, claw family from your face,
tear out nostalgia by the nerves, vault you onto a black Valkyries wind.
When tempest set me down with a last lightning kiss
and took its mad darkness over the horizon,
I stood in the ache of everything I had let go,
the A minor scale humming its requiem to the minor third,
freeing every trapped angel until ghost fingers fell away
and I came into the stillness where the first note waits.