Scales – a poem by Michael Centore

Scales

The leaves caress the waterfall.
The window of the shed is open.
I can hear the notes of the piano
dancing on the surface of the current.

All afternoon I wandered the property,
peeling my life from its circumstances
like an apple from its skin. 
Now I sit and listen. God gives us days

to practice the rhythm of eternity.
Down along the edge of the wood,
dark honeycomb whose nectar is humidity,
the wind passes over pages of hydrangeas

sewn into a thin volume of poems.
Like the green of the leaves turning fiery colors
to be extinguished by the winter rains
the river will smoke with its telling,

I will be saying goodbye for the rest of my life.
Your hands move up and down the scales.
The river is carried on the back of a fish
or crawls on its knees to the sea.

Michael Centore is the editor of Today’s American Catholic, a journal of inquiry, reflection, and opinion based in the US. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the National Catholic Reporter, Religious Socialism, the Pentecost Vigil Project, and other publications.