Music Studio There would be strangers now, who tend the fields, their modest cottage shyly in the view, and down the road, at that time almost new, the studio where quiet yielded to a modal passage, or a wiser voice, forgotten, a mentor’s voice, his welcome words, inviting there among the songs of birds a pleasing music from a pleasant noise. A ghost still sits with me, who wished me well, who saw in me a vision of a man who’d tackle modestly a modest plan.
Skimming Pleasures off the Top A summary of things I miss the most would have to start with sun and shade and sand, two mothers, theirs and mine, across the street, and, down the road, the chickens in a farmyard. An aproned woman dotes on me, although a dream or two have added her where once there may have been just pleasant solitude. The smell of halls and classrooms in the fall-- and those days, best of all, I learned to read. I’m learning still! I miss the boy my age sailing off with nothing but a boat while I sat reading in my room. I miss the feel of autumn air on sweaty skin, playing ball with neighbors in the yard. I miss the waves that lapped along the shore, the salt-infused and sun-ignited sea, the rowboat in the reeds--to be there now, a boy along a seaweed-scented beach! I miss my first glimpse of the universe, of learning how the stuff of space relates to gravity, the naming of the stars, their constellations, and the buzz of small and active particles that form the All. I miss the girls across the room, too shy to talk to me, and I to them. I miss the heady mix of feelings when desire moved in to complicate the day, the week, the years, and nudged me past the line dividing boy from man--the blazing trip across the threshold’s thrust of no return. I miss my first encounters with the works from minds so much more powerful than mine, manipulations of dy/dx, of calculus--to think of its inception-- the infinite complexity of art-- of music in the hands of Mozart, and the innocence to think what’s possible is just a matter of mere perseverance. And how I’d love to hear again, and with the ear I tuned to sound I hoped I’d made-- the first time that an orchestra performed-- not Mozart’s, Mahler’s or Stravinsky’s notes-- but mine!--the transfer from an inner ear to paper, parts, and finally orchestral sound had worked as well as I had thought it would… The insistence of grasping memory: to watch the measured necklace of todays turn its finite pearls to yesterdays, the string of pearls unravel one by one, the last pearl on the string at last unstrung… A fool would ask an Ariel to appear and drag him back to have the best again, when, reasonably content within his age, he can, alone, just savor now and then where fortune moved a cloud or two aside. A summary of things I miss the most would have to start with sun and shade and sand, two mothers, theirs and mine, across the street, and, down the road, the chickens in a farmyard. An aproned woman dotes on me, although a dream or two have added her where once there may have been just pleasant solitude. The smell of halls and classrooms in the fall-- and those days, best of all, I learned to read. I’m learning still! I miss the boy my age sailing off with nothing but a boat while I sat reading in my room. I miss the feel of autumn air on sweaty skin, playing ball with neighbors in the yard. I miss the waves that lapped along the shore, the salt-infused and sun-ignited sea, the rowboat in the reeds--to be there now, a boy along a seaweed-scented beach! I miss my first glimpse of the universe, of learning how the stuff of space relates to gravity, the naming of the stars, their constellations, and the buzz of small and active particles that form the All. I miss the girls across the room, too shy to talk to me, and I to them. I miss the heady mix of feelings when desire moved in to complicate the day, the week, the years, and nudged me past the line dividing boy from man--the blazing trip across the threshold’s thrust of no return. I miss my first encounters with the works from minds so much more powerful than mine, manipulations of dy/dx, of calculus--to think of its inception-- the infinite complexity of art-- of music in the hands of Mozart, and the innocence to think what’s possible is just a matter of mere perseverance. And how I’d love to hear again, and with the ear I tuned to sound I hoped I’d made-- the first time that an orchestra performed-- not Mozart’s, Mahler’s or Stravinsky’s notes-- but mine!--the transfer from an inner ear to paper, parts, and finally orchestral sound had worked as well as I had thought it would… The insistence of grasping memory: to watch the measured necklace of todays turn its finite pearls to yesterdays, the string of pearls unravel one by one, the last pearl on the string at last unstrung… A fool would ask an Ariel to appear and drag him back to have the best again, when, reasonably content within his age, he can, alone, just savor now and then where fortune moved a cloud or two aside.
Donald Wheelock’s poems have appeared in Able Muse, the Alabama Literary Review, Think, Blue Unicorn and many other publications. His chapbook, In the Sea of Dreams, is available from Gallery of Readers Press. Kelsay Books issued It’s Hard Enough to Fly, his first full-length book of poems, in the fall of 2022.
Pulsebeat Poetry Journal 