Antony Dunn
Clarinet Practice
For Tim
Reed music, thin as the note
of a grass blade between thumbs,
through a mouthpiece of crystal
which sang, look, nothing to hide.
In the big dormitory
dizzy with boot-room polish
and the closeness of sunlight,
I unkissed the brass mouthpiece,
watched the spit dry to nothing
and filled my lungs with your note
coming in across the lawn
from an open-windowed room;
and the one white vowel of it
stretched its neck, unfolded wings
and stamped a light glissando
across the surface tension
and up and off with big swoops,
keening and sleeking away,
trying out a lifting voice
that sang, more clearly more high,
home is both a place ahead
and the place shrinking behind
and, more than these, the pure song,
the distance and the singing.
Page(s) 86
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