While we wait for the robins to come home

While we wait for the robins to come home,

spring’s true harbingers returning,

and pray that the groundhog was wrong,

afraid of his shadow and the potential

for spring’s return, scurrying below,

we endure a little longer the cold and snow,

content ourselves with the business

of winter winding down, down-hearted

at predictions of snow and the prospects of shoveling,

but our spirits soar on a day

when the sunshine’s bright in a summer sky,

rich and blue and clear and

the temperature creeps up past 32

and holds there, warming us,

even as it warms the earth,

readying us for spring, content

in the passing seasons of our lives.

The Community Band

We get together, weekly, every Tuesday,

16-20 of us, more or less,

working around jobs and commitments,

other obligations, and the weather;

we gather in the middle school

music room and add, now, to the instruments

cubbied there, our own, an assortment

of old cases and horns, reeds

and woodwinds dug out of attics

and closets, brought back to life

after years of storage, stored away,

to be revived, the squeaks and squawks,

the bleats and blats we’d overcome before

in years of practice returning now

in the disuse of time spent un-played;

not that it matters any more, really, not much,

as we work to remember notes and fingerings,

getting them to match the pitch

and tone we hear clearly, distantly;

but we work at it weekly, weakly,

practicing to rebuild what we’d lost,

years since we last played, a talent gone, wasted,

and needing the confidence to make, once again,

mistakes and to laugh once more at ourselves

until we get it right, as we laughed back then,

blushing youth, embarrassed, laughing at ourselves

in daily practice among the friends and foes

of a high school band, and the drama, too;

and making music, the white baton beats

out a rhythmic time, time passing musically,

andante, allegro, grandioso, a crescendo of youth

until we packed the horns away,

left reeds to dry and crack and took up

new pursuits, busying ourselves

in the business of growing older, growing up,

too busy, perhaps, to practice anymore, or play

as we had before, not even a hobby now,

a pastime, and time passes on, beating

rhythmically, marching onward until,

da capo, we by chance fall upon a case,

an old case tucked away, dusty with age, and we wonder

why we saved it, but we dust it off,

take it out, remembering, and hold it,

an old friend, held high, poised to play,

wondering, too, if we could – can we? –

make a sound, recall again the music from it;

and the white baton stills beats, rhythmically counting,

continuing, time passing still, time passing on,

and we blow, a weak tone wavering,

a mere shadow of our former glories

taking us back to first lessons,

learning to play, and progressing back to a new horn,

proudly held, now gone to tarnish,

and carried carefully those years through

grade school to middle school to high school

into the attic or the back of the closet where it lay

till now, held, remembering, the camaraderie of the band room

and the relationships beyond the music –

why we played then, really, in love with the young

girl with the French horn – and now,

in years long gone behind us, many years gone,

we gather again, a gathering of ages, sages,

weekly, 16-20 of us, more or less,

making, again, the music, weakly played

and it all comes back, the gathering,

the playing, the music, the camaraderie,

- the young girl with the French horn -

this community of musicians playing now, again,

andante, allegro, grandioso, the decrescendo

of age taking us back.

Footprints in the Snow

Did you ever look at footprints

in the snow? Really look,

looking deep in the hollows they create

to where a foot came to rest

and left itself, an impression

pressed into the snow:

the soft pad of canines, felines,

wild and unseen, or domestic,

or the sharp point of a deer’s hooves

stepping lightly, piercing, an arrow shot,

or barely breaking the crust of snow,

the delicate scratching of birds or mice,

rodents rooting, hurried and afraid,

seeking shelter, a safe harbor;

did you ever look at footprints

in the snow, the impression

that they leave, even your own?

Signature

My name scrawled across the page,

like me, is old, so changed from

Mrs. Bailey’s 4^th grade cursive taught,

practiced, rehearsed, neat and mastered script

grown tired in recent years passing,

a pen running letters together, squeezed illegibly,

and a touch of lazy perhaps, usurped

by overuse, misuse, disuse, the clatter

of keys in fingers’ easy reach of letters handy

or silent keyboards tapped, transferring words

to a printer’s exactness, clear and self-corrected,

a signature obsolete, lost and unread, unreadable

scrawl across a page, old and tired.