Poetry Please - Powder - My Violin

My Violin

Our rosin powders mingle in the case,

Where, fallen from the belly and the bow,

Each particle trapped in the velvet space

Becomes our common dust, our residue.

*

The dulled brass clasps have almost lost their spring,

The battered lid creaks open stiffly hinged,

And now I breathe the scent in, touch the strings

And lift her by the neck, remembering.

*

The tuning pegs are slack, the strings awry,

But as I twist, the thrilling upward swoop

From twang to song, from base earth into sky,

Reveals my violin's majestic scope.

*

I add new rosin to the horse-hair bow,

Then raise the vacant chin-rest to my jaw

And grip the ebony, as long ago

My father and his father used to do.

*

And as I play, my tears, my tears start falling,

Released in waves that roll in like a tide.

Sweet cadences...I hear my father playing,

'Tis you 'tis you must go and I must bide.