Maiden Aunt:
(for S. T., 1889-1971)

My mother's aunt lived all her life in her father's house. Old photos of the aunt show she was a beauty in her younger days, and her wonderful piano solos reveal she had a highly romantic soul. (She preferred such composers as Schumann, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and Debussy.) Because the aunt had no other kin who cared, my mother would travel to Louisiana to visit her from time to time. On a few occasions I went along with Mother to the old aunt's home and I heard her play.

Still in her father's house
after more than eighty years
she played most evenings
for herself
though anyone was free to listen
in those days of open summer windows
letting life both in and out
while waiting for a cooling breeze.

The furious scores of Chopin,
especially the "Military Polonaise" --
how could such fingers
frail with age
set hurtling that barrage of notes?
Each fresh attack
unsettled all the parlor air.

And I recall her "Clair de Lune"
as she so gently fingered it,
her eyes half-closed
as she and Debussy
moved toward the climax
of her song.

On her piano,
a photograph from 1910
of the maiden aunt --
her aching beauty
gowned and coiffed and slippered
for a ball -- and, by her side,
the escort,
in formal evening wear.

In that frozen moment
she gazes up at him,
and he at her.

We do not know his name.

And she never said.

-- Warren F. O'Rourke, 1971 (revised in 2004)