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      March 23, 2024Stray InstrumentClaire Fields

      The secretary has announced
      over the intercom that
      there is a stray French horn
      in the building
      and will you please
      keep your eyes open
      for it.
      As the teacher resumes her
      lecture, I wonder if
      the instrument has escaped
      from its black case, tough
      as avocado skin,
      and has joined a secret band
      of stray instrument outcasts:
      the ridiculed tuba,
      the skittish viola,
      the brooding bassoon.
      Perhaps, in the winter months,
      when sleepy-eyed heaters clang so
      loudly from deep below the school
      that the teacher must
      stop
      mid-sentence,
      perhaps the clanging is really
      the forgotten triangle,
      calling the stray band
      to attention, saying in his thin voice
      “Beethoven’s Fifth, everyone,
      on three.”

      from #26 - Winter 2006

      Claire Fields

      “Last spring I took a walk and ended up horribly lost. Eventually, after an hour of reading street signs with foreign names, I found my house again and collapsed on the couch, shaken by the experience. Yet, when I think back to that afternoon, what I think of first is how the leaves being swept from the sidewalk by wind looked so much like a flock of sparrows, spinning into the air on brown wings. This is why I write poetry: to be comforted by the beautifully mundane when I find myself lost.”

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