Santa Clara University

Poetry on Piano

The following sestina was written by Christine Boepple ’95, the daughter of Hans Boepple. The sestina was published in the spring, 1993, issue of SCU’s literary magazine, the Santa Clara Review. It is reprinted here with permission of the author.

According to the Miriam-Webster online dictionary, a sestina is “a lyrical fixed form consisting of six, 6-line usually unrhymed stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of the three verses of the concluding tercet.

head feeds the hands

by Christine Boepple ’95

always, there is movement, hands
racing, building music,
sounds jumping through the house,
making heat when there isn’t any,
pushing air, pushing ears, opening
minds to larger and brighter

ideas. how easy it is for sounds, once bright
to dim. head feeds the hands.
my big wet open
eyes sing with the music
within my body, not as if any
sound will break me, there is no sound for my house.

my father is content in his house.
his mornings ring bright,
when grey, any
heavy dullness floats out of his fresh hands.
words brew with the music,
our day ripens, our eyes open.

when the moon opens
and the eyes close in our house,
my father begins his music
and my dreams are colored brightly.
like a spell, sounds use their hands
squeeze out any

questions, any worries, any
time the sound of open
hearts leak from his hands.
tucked inside my house
of bright
sounds and light; his blood, his music

turns into my music
that I will carry to any place, any
time. my hands are now bright
like his hands. my heart now opens
like his heart. his house was always my house,
my house was always his hands.

now I swim into the music, into the open
anywhere. any sound is my house,
and I will always be as bright, as colored as my hands.