Music Festival, Sewanee, Tennessee
In come the harps, four grounded wings
as of some Cretaceous dragonfly
dismembered and shellacked:
two black, one cedar-red, one golden brown
conveyed on baggage dollies,
torn angels positioned one by one
al fresco in the sun
to be plucked by four dewy girls
ordered the way Matisse
might have arrayed them: a blonde
at the black, a black at the cedar-red,
an Asian at the golden brown and
a pale brunette at the other black.
While we sit pampered in the shade
out pours the piece I came to grief on:
Carl Philipp Emanuel’s “Solfeggietto.”
Miss Alexander’s spatulate digits
stretched my stubby fingers to enforce
leaps I couldn’t make, little runs
through lesser unplayable Bach
that defeated me the year I was ten.
Parents, nostalgists, drop-ins hush.
The harps sing, it is virginal.
Carl Philipp two hundred years gone
and Miss Alexander misplaced fifty years
outside whose window even then
as now a cardinal from the pin
oak calls fierce fierce!
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