Band Concert

In a gymnasium of restless parents
and more restless kids,
a sudden hush falls over the crowd
as the fifth grade band
lifts instruments to play Fanfare March,
a song like every other band song
you’ve heard, a song
like no other band song you’ve heard
because it’s your grandson there,
in the third row, fourth from the end,
blowing his heart into the trumpet
pressed to his lips, fingers moving,
lungs lifting and lowering,
face stern and focused, trying to coax
just the right note from that golden tube.
You sit on the bleachers in watchful bliss,
grateful for every blown note.

Published in Best Times

Coming Home

When the ghost of Coltrane opens up his saxophone,
ruffles the bass, uncoils the drums, and lets
his piano man loose, music zooms through the Blue
Room walls, turns them electric red. Memory blooms

with fiery melancholy, scent of poppies and olive
groves, taste of wild persimmons and satsumas,
touch of spidery silk and rough-weave burnoose.
I smell the smoky fog of Soho on a summer night,

hear just the right tone taking on its melody at last,
finding itself the way a cat creeps in through
a crack in the window, seizing my mirrored years,
yanking me back to where I always wanted to belong.

Published in Kansas City Voices
.


.Landing in Miami

This time
my butterflies surprise me.
You won’t be meeting me
wearing the shirt I bought you,
leaning against the airport wall,
a tall stork with one sandaled foot
wedged behind,
your face waiting to smile
when you see me,
insisting I drop my bags
so you can circle me
with butterfly kisses

This time
my butterflies will stay
in their ribbed cage,
flutter against a heart
empty of expectation.
I’m left with this uneasy lust
that finds no human form
for a home.
It must be the arching palm trees
I ache for, a longing for salt air
and sultry sunsets,
the pink curves of condos
that slide through shadows as real
as recollections of our love

Published in New Works Review