Donald Wheelock

Cutler’s, Patelson’s
   (Cutler’s was a record shop in New Haven, 
   Patelson’s a music shop in N.Y.C.)

The walls were endless spines of 33’s,
the cardboard covers of the discs that spun
my life into the future. How to choose?
Every piece of music written down
was represented here — the fugues of Bach,
shelves and shelves of symphonies, quartets
too numerous to name or number, hours
stored on the spinning spirals of my youth.
 
And then to match them with orchestral scores,
the trip to Patelson’s an hour away,
the search for the matching titles, those I had
on disc, to follow genius on the page;
how the source of pleasure absolute
stacked up in staves of homophonic blocks
or weaves of multi-textured counterpoint.
How it went together, sounds and notes,
 
this scripture handed down from man to boy,
to find within divine complexity
what minor part an acolyte could play
in falling into line behind such mastery,
to worship, wonder what it must be like
to send into the world an artifact
of sheer perfection, and the constant thrill
of notes that moved me just because they did.

Poetry, a preoccupation for many years, has taken over Donald Wheelock’s life after a career of teaching and composing concert music. Pulsebeat, Sparks of Calliope, THINK, Blue Unicorn, and many other journals have published his poems. His two full-length books, It’s Hard Enough to Fly and With Nothing but a Nod have been published by Kelsay Books and David Robert Books, respectively.