First song.

                 The first music I ever heard (not just around me but first music really HEARD) was my mother playing piano. Songs unspecific, a couple leap to mind (Gloryland, Friend.) I wasn't paying too much attention anyway- I hated it. I hated piano and disliked music for at least the first 12 years of my life. And because of my constant complaining (and probably also in part because of the trauma of the suicides of her brothers, though you'd think that would be exactly the time to make art) my mother stopped playing piano.

                I didn't know this till about a year ago, when I started actually listening to her songs, many of which are quite beautiful. I'd seen the joy on her face of course in those rare occasions she would play but... she would only play so rarely. I couldn't understand it.

                Anyway, when I asked her about it she told me "There's no music in my heart anymore."

                So I wrote this poem about it.

                It's a little more "academic" poetry than I usually do- working with spaces kind of trying to capture between dream memories of boyhood and my own incoherent, broken up feelings about the whole business.