community concert poem #2
what makes an item have value? my
sister remembers this as madison
I recall it as at a beloit community
concert but no matter – the action is
the same a famous violinist was playing
was it heifetz? menuhin? szigeti? too long
ago for perlman, joshua bell – anyway
the soloist broke a string I have never
seen anyone change a string as rapidly
as he did – then tuned, picked up right
where he’d left off – a second after the
final applause that closed the concert
my sister scrambled to the stage fell to her knees retrieved the broken string the virtuoso had dropped (I think an A)
she kept it in a velvet box in her bedroom
(she was of course an aspiring fiddler) – I
used to sneak reverent peeks at that string
she doesn’t know where it is now but
surely it was never never thrown away
2021 Jacqueline Jackson
This article appears in Blight fight.
