Oboe

Your lips move moist around
my double reed, and I feel
the sad wind rising

through your throat. Some child
of yours is lost. If I were your
psychiatrist, I'd listen,

nod, prescribe. Instead,
I take your breath, shape it, let it find
a passage down this wooden

shaft, curl out around the ankles
of the clarinet. The horns
have forged a monumental

fountain on the stage and now
the strings supply the water,
surging up, looping, falling in

great sobs. The audience is weeping,
but you and I have doubts.
We wind our fiber through

the latticework of their grand art,
hoping someone may hear
the muscled twist

of grief that's seasoned
in a narrow tube, the hollow
music of a long-held breath.

Copyright © 2004 Conrad Hilberry All rights reserved
from Chautauqua Literary Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission