For KB
August 1987, in the parking lot outside Canandaigua Academy.
That sounds posh but it wasn’t.
It was the summer before my freshman year.
I was waiting for marching band practice to begin.
I had just learned that I was going to be playing saxophone;
an instrument I’d never even held, let alone played.
A small group of guys were standing off to one side.
One of them was dividing up the drum machine parts
from the beginning of “Mama” by Genesis.
Each person was given one to sing.
I had never heard the song.
It’s quite possible I’d never heard of Genesis.
I wandered closer. He gave me a part.
Maybe the hi hat.
July 2023, on a bench in Canandaigua.
I don’t live there anymore and neither does he.
We’re sitting outside the old music store,
telling stories about days gone by.
His wife is there, his teenage child is back at his parents’ place.
One of my boys is working in DC before his senior year of college,
the other is working in PA before his senior year of high school.
Neither of my kids joined the marching band.
His kid plays cello, so the odds don’t seem good there, either.
We both still listen to Genesis, though maybe not as often as we used to.
/ / /
27 July 2023
Charlottesville VA
This is poem #6 in a new series, 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.
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