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| I would like to leave the page blank but I´m afraid it would all be misunderstood or, worse, forgotten. It´s late and the clock is ticking, the dog snores, and the pencil, well, it seems to have a mind of its own, like a music box wound up. I had one once, a gift from my mother– the key turned and turned and notes fell into my ears or rose to them if the box was in my hand, say, waist-level in my hand, where it sat inanimate and yet alive with feeling and warmth, its smooth wooden lid not yet stained with age. I didn´t recognize its tune then, an incantation from a time before my time, a Romantic etude perhaps, or a variation on a Neoclassical theme, an homage to a past that now is mine, my mother´s voice a music teacher´s slow tick-tocking lesson on pacing and interpretation, one then another turning into sound, lesson and memory turning into sound and meaning nothing more than that, nothing more than sound. I close the lid, the notes more than I can bear.  Cory Brown grew up in western Oklahoma raising cattle and now lives in upstate New York, teaching at Ithaca College. He studied at Oklahoma State and then Cornell University. His second collection, Poems 1986-1998, is from Water Street Press; his first, from Swallow's Tale Press. He has poems forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, and Rosebud Magazine. |
