After-Music

Oboe

 o B o e Your lips move moist around my double reed, and i feel the sad wind rising through your throat. some child of yours is lost. if i were your psychiatrist, i’d listen, nod, prescribe. instead, i take your breath, shape it, let it find a passage down this wooden shaft, curl out around the ankles of the clarinet. The horns have forged a monumental fountain on the stage and now the strings supply the water, surging up, looping, falling in  great sobs. The audience is weeping, but you and i have doubts. We wind our fiber through the latticework of their grand art, hoping someone may hear the muscled twist of grief that’s seasoned in a narrow tube, the hollow music of a long-held breath. ...