a piano

built in America

for use in saloon bars

with a high iron frame and a tone

to be heard over a room full of sloshed singers

yet how sweet it could sound

when damped by blankets

and played at 3am by an inspired songwriter
the ivories are chipped like a woodsman’s teeth

and scorched now

by a hundred years of nicotined fingers

but still it’s a sterling object

built to last though inherited

by an evolve or die world where

what man makes man breaks

where he drinks to accelerando

and belts out ballads

with the timbre of falling trees
then there’s the coconut

with its unidentified growth factor

and floating in its glowing white ocean

expectant beings

ready to scale the meat form ensembles

evolve instruments on which to beat out

the rhythms of their tiny as yet

unbreakable hearts