Al Ortolani

Rescuing the Upright

The piano had been sitting in an empty farmhouse for weeks.

Snow had fallen deep for Missouri, leveling the ditches

up to the hedgerows. More was expected.

She seemed eager to leave, if that was possible,

abandoned to the cold, the dark rooms, the half-closed doors,

a lonely girl at a school dance. The floor groaned

as we rolled her across the hardwood, jockeying her

through the door, onto the front porch, and then lifting

one end, and then the second into the truck bed. Martin sat

on the wheel well and banged out a few chords of Scott Joplin,

all he knew, a single ragtime across the frozen pasture. A turkey vulture

circled Center Creek. Juncos scattered rosehips in the thorns.

We rolled cigarettes and smoked until the cab fogged.

There was rescue in the new snow, a victory with

Martin in the truck bed tapping the ivory, a Bugler in his hand.

Al Ortolani is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. In 2024 he was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. Currently, he’s a contributing poetry editor to the Chiron Review.