A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers,

tied up with canvas straps—like classical music’s

birthday gift to the criminally insane—

is gently nudged without its legs

out an eighth‐floor window on 62nd street.

It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers’ crane,

Chopin-­‐shiny black lacquer squares

and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second‐to­‐last

note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat,

the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over—

it’s a piano being pushed out of a window

and lowered down onto a flatbed truck!—and

I’m trying to teach math in the building across the street.

Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned?

All the greatest common factors are delivered by

long‐necked cranes and flatbed trucks

or come through everything, even air.

Like snow.

See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year

my students rush to the window

as if snow were more interesting than math,

which, of course, it is.

So please.

Let me teach like a Steinway,

spinning slowly in April air,

so almost-­‐falling, so hinderingly

dangling from the neck of the movers’ crane.

So on the edge of losing everything.

Let me teach like the first snow, falling.

Mali. Taylor. “Undivided Attention.” What Learning Leaves. Newtown, CT: Hanover Press, 2002. Print. (ISBN: 1-­‐887012-­‐17-­‐6)