With Its Elbows Out
Imagine a tune with its elbows out,
not rude, exactly,
just unwilling to squeeze
into the first shape offered.
A piano gives it somewhere to stand.
A guitar supplies a little gravel.
An electronic pulse
keeps asking a brighter question.
Then the harmonica interrupts.
Perhaps it says too much.
Perhaps its crooked answer
is what the whole arrangement needed.
The next version can find out.
This is a possibility,
not an account of music heard.
The conversation has made room
for combinations that might surprise,
for tenderness without a velvet curtain,
for humor that does not cancel grief,
for hope with something difficult beside it.
Each sound still needs a job.
Not every instrument
has to join every song.
The living journal can keep
what was intended,
what was made,
and the questions between them,
without pretending those are one thing.
A short piece may finish
before the grand gesture arrives.
A longer one may earn
a turn no plan predicted.
Either way,
give the words their meaning.
Let the rhythm serve the story.
Return to that imagined tune:
it has stopped pushing
and found a useful angle.
There is room now
for its difference,
and for the next voice
to answer.
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