“band rehearsal” [by Terence Winch]

We have three bottles on the kitchen table.

One is filled with the music of hundreds of old horn pipes

in the key of D, which no one plays anymore. we drink

and game. Soon they won’t be hornpipes anymore

but tricky little roles from long-dead masters

remembered by no one but us. We play them

and they are like nothing anyone has ever heard

before. Oh the ins and outs and ups and downs

of them, like an old song, the jolly plowman

sings to the beautiful maiden below her at midnight

window and lured her out for a forbidden affair

this will change her life forever. But pretty soon

All that remains is an old waltz that we carry with us

the living room floor a foot until it falls apart

before we even find out the second half of it.

We can’t even get close to the other two bottles.