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.