Music becomes even more resplendent, commanding, and at times spiritual in the capable hands of Anne-Marie Thompson, a pianist herself whose love of music–and those who play–echoes throughout the pages of her first book, Audiation.
“Siberia, 1986”
Clutched in a fist of dust a halo of dust
the track ramshackled up the road from nowhere
from some other nowhere and as if all this were
written down written in dust and to it you shall return
as if we made a mark on any map at all
pulled over to my father and me and he
familiar leaned out the window saying come
and there would be a concert at the church
I will be playing a concert at the church
and so we followed him and there was a crowd
already gathered neighbors some were strangers
but like us they were strangers but poor like us
and we were quiet together and the twilight was quiet
the twilight waited with us and we all watched
as he stepped down and someone helped him loosen
the locks and straps like untethering a bear
the piano
growled and squeaked as they guided it a whisper
Richter Sviatoslav Richter from the radio
they said
and he sat down and we understood
the actual weight of gravity remembered
what the earth looks like sounds like from heaven
and we were quiet together and the man
was serious was serious as his hands were serious
bear hands iron hands but gentle as a man
can be gentle and he knew the actual weight
of our sorrows and we were quiet together
and when
my father and I walked home walked in silence home
we knew the heaviness of each other’s hearts the heaviness
of those gentleman hands hard hands and we were quiet
and heard something a coming and a going
a breath or a raising up the whisper of a sickle
the lifting of a page the lifting of hands
live in the layers 