This week’s poem, Mike Bove’s “Piano,” brings us into an unlikely musical encounter outside a club in an alley. I love this poem’s assured storytelling chops, and the thrilling warmth of the speaker’s brief communion with “a piano / waiting for its end.”

Bove is the author of four books of poems, including “EYE” (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) and the forthcoming “Soundtrack to Your Next Panic Attack” (Aldrich Press, 2024). He is a professor of English at Southern Maine Community College and lives with his family in Portland, where he was born and raised.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

Piano
By Mike Bove

After the gig, we loaded out
through a side door
and I saw the old upright
they’d left by the dumpster
to be hauled away.
We’d played new material
to an empty room
and knew it needed work.
It was the deepest part
of February, so cold
that ungloved hands could’ve
gone mute in minutes, but
something about a piano
waiting for its end got inside
deeper than chill. I reached
and rolled a trill of major notes
into the dark. It was nothing,
but it was enough
to curb the cold for a half-step
and might have been
the best thing
I played all night.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Piano,” copyright 2023 by Mike Bove, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.