Tim Pearson

The sound of a shy piano

The sound of a shy piano in a whitewashed room.
Sleets of whispers, acidic and soft,
Like burning dew that forms on a barren plain.

The silent, blue caress of the dawn rain,
A girl’s frightened fingers gently smoothing the cheek of night,
The first childlike confessions as a black fever wanes.

The sound of two voices, awkward and young,
That echo in a wrinkled heart like a forgotten song.
A mute girl who slowly carves two sets of initials
On a granite wall.

Christmas lights, long left hung,
Twinkling like a frail aurora in the frosty spring.

Tim Pearson's booklet Fulfilment in Shadows has just been published by Survivors' Press (ISBN 978-1-874595-12-0), at £4+£1 p&p. This poem was written subsequent to that collection.