Sky

Sky

by Charles Deemer

I miss the butterflies

that used to visit

our butterfly bush

every summer

I miss the deer

that used to wander

into the abandoned orchard

next to us for apples

Most of all, I miss

a night sky blazing

with stars, so many more

than this smattering 

of token urban stars

--stars far beyond numbers

breath-taking, awe-inspiring

argument and proof

of human smallness

a nightly jolt of humility

which somehow our ancestors

under skies before industry

starry, starry nights

saw in an opposite way

looking up not with humility

but into unbridled opportunity

a powerful calling 

to destiny and empire

which would be realized

the success of greed

destroying the sky

Tin Ear

Tin Ear 
by Peter Schmitt 

We stood at attention as she moved
with a kind of Groucho shuffle
down our line, her trained music
teacher’s ear passing by
our ten- and eleven-year-old mouths
open to some song now forgotten.
And as she held her momentary
pause in front of me, I peered
from the comer of my eye
to hers, and knew the truth
I had suspected.
In the following days,
as certain of our peers
disappeared at appointed hours
for the Chorus, something in me
was already closing shop.
Indeed, to this day
I still clam up
for the national anthem
in crowded stadiums, draw
disapproving alumni stares
as I smile the length of school songs,
and even hum and clap
through “Happy Birthday,” creating
a diversion-all lest I send
the collective pitch
careening headlong into dissonance.
It’s only in the choice acoustics
of shower and sealed car
that I can finally give voice

to that heart deep within me
that is pure, tonally perfect, music.
But when the water stops running
and the radio’s off, I can remember
that day in class,
when I knew for the first time
that mine would be a world of words
without melody, where refrain
means do not join,
where I’m ready to sing
in a key no one has ever heard.


"Tin Ear" by Peter Schmitt from Country Airport. © Copper Beech Press, 1989.