Life as a School Orchestra

Life has the rhythm to sway to:

the scattered clanging of a

tambourine and the fluttery trills

of the piano. It falls on one

suddenly: the swell of a

schoolhouse orchestra. In all

technicality, life is incredibly

untalented. It is the pimply-faced child

who hovers after class to run

fingers across gleaming brass,

across horse-hair bows. Life lingers here

aomewhere between elation and depression,

where the mind hungers for an unoccupied moment

to occupy with peace, to trade a productivity for

absolutely nothing, that is where the metaphor

is cut short in its tracks. When the record squeeches,

atops and white fuzz forms a background music.

You see: when the players filter out the instruments will sleep,

and wait, indifferent to the thought of waiting or the memory

of playing pretty music. An instrument is no more our body

than our mind is the player. The culmination of the human being

is a collage with fraying edges, a rumpled patchwork quilt.

It favors an imbalance of its composition,

thrives in the poor workmanship

that makes it unprofessional.

Our emotions seem to bubble out

unceremonious, unable to

resist the flow, the rise and fall of song.