M. M. Fisher
2011 Utah Honor Scroll Award

M. M. Fisher, 65, Salt Lake City, is a semi-retired independent contractor whose specialty is sewing. She is an avid fan of classical music, antiques and her couch-potato cat. She has worked as a hotel desk clerk, alterations tailor, and poet whose award-winning works include this poem which won the New River Poets contest in 2006 and also the Utah State Poetry Society's free verse category in 2006. She won the Utah Senior Poet Laureate awards in 2007 and 2008. Her sun sign is Virgo.

She Plays Piano

in a bar.
Blood-red nails
trickle over Baldwin ivory,
as she runs the riffs and old glissandos
in a corner pool of spotlight
within the smoke-stained dark.

Underneath the glossy wig,
her hair is thinner now and graying,
her gowns and lashes
are years of careful hoardings
from the basement at Filene's;
but the evening slinks are still size 8's,
and when she bows her head the lashes fall
as grace notes on her cheeks.

Her eyes still hold some sparkle
from the year a passing hand of fate
left fingerprints in stardust;
so her back maintains its ruler straightness
as she glides in satin shoes across
a decades-scarred oak floor to claim
her corner pool of spotlight gold,
on the nights she plays piano
in the bar.