Backyard Chimes
These backyard chimes remind me that our universe plays an eternal symphony, and we are but one instrument (some woodwinds, some brass, some percussion, sometimes only a lowly triangle in an orchestral suite, tuba in a marching troupe, or possibly the most dissonant chord in a punk rock band).
Several incidents have occurred over spring break to remind me and mine of something that we prefer to keep tucked away on an infrequently dusted shelf. Stashed away like an unfamiliar piece of sheet music that touches us in an uncomfortable way: our tenuous mortality.
We arrive here crying—pushed unwilling into the music of the spheres. We serve a brief stint here (Volti subito–the page is turned quickly) forming the notes of our fate’s individual path: eighth, quarter, whole ones. We place them on the forward moving F clef and the G clef path—Andante at times, Moderato at others, sometimes Allegretto.
We build them to a refrain and coda, if lucky. Sometimes though, the music stops as it did for us in high school when our band director wanted to leave us frustrated, snapped shut and silent with a quick downward twist of his baton and a dismissive shrug. One is abandoned to the silence of John Cage’s 4’33” for piano with no comforting coda or outro—
for us writers, no consoling denouement.