BY TED KOOSER

U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006

Poets are especially good at investing objects with meaning, or in drawing meaning from the things of this world. Here Patrick Phillips of Brooklyn, New York, does a masterful job of comparing a wrecked piano to his feelings.

Piano

Touched by your goodness, I am like

that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby

that someone had smashed and somehow

heaved through an open window.

And you might think by this I mean I'm broken

or abandoned, or unloved. Truth is, I don't

know exactly what I am, any more

than the wreckage in the alley knows

it's a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.

Maybe I'm all that's left of what I was.

But touching me, I know, you are the good

breeze blowing across its rusted strings.

What would you call that feeling when the wood,

even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org, publisher of Poetry magazine.