Harmonica

Forty years ago he stood on a rail platform
from which no trains ran. His harmonica
played such mournful sounds that he wasn’t sure
who played!—though he was mournful, though he could play.

So far away from home and so homesick,
missing his place and people (that’s the way
he would have put it, would have thought of it),
he sought to embrace a home where he truly belonged.

But the harmonica played a different song
all out of proportion, bending deeper
into the chords of time, the pitch of distance.
He lowered the instrument in its black shell—who played?

For a note hung in the sky like a quarter moon
to fall back to earth dressed in silver rain.
Flinty sparks burst from the reeds, to weep,
to soar, to break off without a tonic.