David Kenneth Braden-Johnson

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Pianism

As fingers fall on whiteness
Their soft strokes keyed to pleasure,
Euphonious sighs of welcome resistance
Trace lyrical curves by measure.

A honeyed voice in close embrace,
The union harmonious and true,
Arouses tangled tastes and tones
Obsidian or dove-like in hue.

Quickening pulses syncopate the aural bones
In metric heartbeats swiftly sonorous;
Enfleshed sounds seed the sustaining air
As fingers fall for us.

David Kenneth Braden-Johnson is an avocational jazz pianist and professor of philosophy at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He is the co-author (with Matthew Silliman) of two philosophical dialogues, Bridges to the World and Bridges to Autonomy, and has published essays and fiction in several journals, including Radical Teacher, Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, Methodologia, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, Constructivist Foundations, The Mind's Eye, and Cerebration. He lives in Conway, Massachusetts with his wife Nicole and their small menagerie of companion animals.