Poetry: The Piano Man

The Piano Man

“…'Cause he knows that it's me they've been comin' to see

to forget about life for a while”                               

—Billy Joel, “The Piano Man”

Driving home, anxious Tuesday, I hear      

“The Piano Man.” Those iconic notes,            

the blistering memories—a man I loved and lost

at seventeen, still a girl.

Rounding one curve

and then another: anxiety revs.

Recently, I heard Joel sing the first

song he’d composed in seventeen years.

Seventeen years!

Of course, we all had our questions.

Why had he gone silent so long?

Had he nothing to say? Was it depression?

Yet my life, far smaller than his,

winds down and down—and I seem

to desire the ever smaller.

In my own anonymous way, to take silent.

To shrink altogether from spotlights

because they are all altogether broken.

Spotlight limelight platform radar.

To shuck the resume

the look-at-me;

to covet the role of things

invisibly impactful, like

microbes minerals mathematics.

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad the piano man

let the tunes in his head

translate, once again, to piano keys.

And here, again, I write. But God save me

from self-promotion and hustle, the soul-numbing

tolls on bridges to somewhere, as in

“you’re gonna get there someday.”


{Originally published at Snapdragon Journal, Fall 2024}