OPEN MIC
The girl with the guitar has a face as open
and bright as an April full moon until
she starts to sing. The lyrics spill out in words
a decade older than her seventeen years.
The guys in the backup band are old,
they’re friends of her musical mom,
but they love the girl, and know to stay
behind and underneath the voice.
She ends a busted-love song she wrote—
how does she know such blue thoughts?—with
a slow, spiraling diminuendo. The drummer
watches her eyes, and at the last possible instant
swishes a wire brush across his crash cymbal.
The silence that follows is the last note of the song.
—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians
__________
Preston Woodruff: “I loved performing, but the road wore me out, and anyway, job, family, money—you know the familiar story. I kept playing close to home, though: bass in a jazz trio, pit bands, and chamber orchestra; lute in a Renaissance consort, lounge-lizard solo guitar in restaurants and bars, lots of wedding receptions and one funeral. All fun. Some days I miss it.”
