Poetry by Laura DeHart Young
It played in the key of reed –
clarinet, oboe, and sax –
notes raspy but clear.
They rose into an instrumental aria
unsung and unfinished –
yet the breathy chords
still hit, pure and insistent,
an orchestral surge cresting
on a wind that blew from the north.
Restless lake water,
chopping and spilling onto sandy rock –
that’s where the
final trailing notes were bound
at the end of a long autumn song.
Flung across the newly chilled shores
like skipping stones,
the equinoctial tune landed in my lap.
I caught it and put it in your mouth.
You hummed,
holding my arms around your waist.
A pileated kept time on a nearby tree –
tapping a backbeat on the offbeat.
Leaves scattered
in tune with autumn’s exhale,
color long gone – brittle in death.
They rustled and twisted with percussion,
merengue style,
floating and dipping in kinetic flurries.
One by one the notes blew into us.
We plucked them out of the air
with our fingertips,
swallowing them whole –
swaying and rocking
until I rolled you in that bed
of musical leaf debris
between boat docks
stacked and stowed.
You stopped humming.
I stopped listening,
the autumn timbre fading
into winter’s cymballistic brass.
Laura DeHart Young graduated with a degree in English and enjoys a career in the communications field. She is currently pursuing poetry writing. Laura is the author of seven novels published by Bella Books Inc. She has also written book reviews for Lambda Book Review in Washington, D.C.
