Largo

When I was twelve I met a famous composer. He told me
melodies would one day be exhausted.


Yet
a single note of lark song drawn into my ear last May

is separated from its recurrence
only by the sameness 
of that particular cochlear pair 
swooping down
over a meager spread of reeds,

and that portion of life spent waiting for 
the rejoining note 
to come soaring through the air
from the black bough of the evergreen tree 
that casts a blue shadow 
on white snow
is also a lie.

DAVID CAPPS

David Capps is a philosophy professor at Western Connecticut State University. He is the author of two chapbooks: Poems from the First Voyage (The Nasiona Press, 2019) and A Non-Grecian Non-Urn (Yavanika Press, 2019). He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.