When I listen to a time before stereo
With the room shut and still,
There is a smallness in the sound -
A pale wavering,
Like someone in their last years confined to a bed.
But I only open the screen door
And that same struggling music blends with the breeze,
Rising into the rattling trees, the scatter of sparrows,
The surprise of an ambulance,
Growing into the present tense
Of everything,
Becoming what it was
When the ones who played it were alive,
When they were trying to find a way
To make old music live again.





revised