We have three bottles on the kitchen table.
One is filled with the music of a hundred old hornpipes
in the key of D that no one plays anymore. We drink
and play. Pretty soon they’re no longer hornpipes,
but tricky little reels from long-dead masters
remembered by no one but us. We play them
and they are like nothing anyone has ever heard
before now. Oh, the ins and outs and ups and downs
of them, like an old song the jolly ploughman
sings to the fair maiden at midnight under her
window, enticing her out for a forbidden fling
that will change her life forever. But pretty soon
all that’s left is an old waltz that we drag along
the living room floor by one foot till it falls apart
before we even figure out the second half of it.
We never even get to the other two bottles.
Go to Source
Author: The Best American Poetry
