great pianists somehow

great pianists somehow are able to drive two stagecoaches

not only at once but across the scrub brush of the unpioneered plain —

no matter how many practices have preceded a performance,

the sheet music will only yield to a manifest destiny attitude —

to steer their two teams of horses from parallel paths

to weaving maneuvers that miraculously leave none entangled

and back again, all with fidelity to a course

that throws different volumes of the topographic encyclopedia

at each hand at once!

claude debussy charting beauty in the undiscovered country!

george gershwin giving the new world the old world treatment with debonair flair!

tori amos rolling her player piano across the desert with the best of the dusty old dudes!

and you, my love, performing works by all of them when just a teen:

that fact didn’t amaze me,

because you were already amazing in so many ways from the start.

no, what’s still got me in awe is the duet we began playing perfectly

from the moment we first met, as if with no rehearsals,

we could automatically control all the wild horses in the old west together

and make them dance out a tune so beautiful

that every hoof beat on dry soil equals the greening

of sad stolen land back into an eden we’ll share with everyone.