Chord

A child is practicing scales at the piano.
            She plays A natural minor

with her left hand, then her right.
            In Kyiv, Ukraine,

a woman packs a suitcase. A map
           catches fire.

A white goat on a shed roof,       
           a postcard dropped

in the street. The child
            sharps the F, plays

both hands together, fingers curled as if
            to pick up an egg.

A man climbs a flight
            of broken stairs, his world       

fragile as eggshells, as petals of crocus
            growing in a Kyiv spring,

as flesh torn from flesh. The child
            moves on to chords,

stretching her fingers
            across an octave. Everything.

Bethany Reid’s Sparrow won the 2012 Gell Poetry Prize, selected by Dorianne Laux. Her stories, poetry, and essays have recently appeared in One Art, Poetry East, Quartet, Passengers, Adelaide and Persimmon Tree. Bethany and her husband live in Edmonds, Washington, near their grown daughters. She blogs about writing and life at http://www.bethanyareid.com.