Poetry for Music Played For Personal Enjoyment

For Personal Enjoyment

By Neal Bowers

When Mr. Bodine said music was math

and I couldn't play because I couldn't count,

I quit the band, in seventh grade,

returned my rented cornet,

freed my parents and everyone on the street

from the loud, laborious addition.

No more stuttering renditions

of "Tom Dooley" played by ear,

no more afternoon improvisations on the scale.

How soon the split air healed itself!

Down the tuneless years, my heart

kept waiting to wail and chose as friends

only physicists who play in the symphony,

who know I own a harmonica

but have never learned to use it.

They sometimes let me stand in at rehearsals,

leaning quietly against the grand piano,

humming softly to myself those lovely numbers.