Your Music
—for my brother, Tom
Graveside at each family burial you play
the requiems, your French horn raised
by your fist inside it, chest and shoulders
in an arc toward the sky, your breath controlled
enough for music stronger than grief.
How the bell of the horn reflects our faces,
our imagined permanence shimmering in the brass.
How the music rises through our still figures,
hauling forward the nets of memory,
gathering speed over these marked fields.
Music needs no rest, no shelter.
In concert I have heard yours move
like wind lifting up the sides of an hour,
like spring heat off snow.
Carol Varner, 1998
from Poet’s Seat Poetry, 2017