Michael Diehl, Disappointed
Parade
In a quiet seaside campground,
a cacophony of sound erupts:
fiddles, banjos, mandolins,
voices singing “Old Joe Clark”
and you strumming your guitar.
Folks look up from campfires
and tumble out of motorhomes
to applaud and dance and wave
at the ragtag bluegrass band
marching in jeans and hiking shoes.
Forget bronchitis, forget the cost
of running away to music camp,
the man who doesn’t remember
where you are or why his sons
are zipping his pants and feeding him.
Breathe the cool fog-tinged air.
Feel the congestion drift away.
Hear your shoes crunch on the sand.
You only need to walk and play
C, F, G7. That’s all you have to do.
________________
Sue Fagalde Lick
Review by Jared Pearce
Music does have that power to pull us away from our worries, if only for a few minutes, and this poem supports that movement: the pop-up performers, the roving in the camp, the way the audience quickly and organically comes together to celebrate. But that’s the best way that music and poetry and people work.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Simple familiar sounds transcending the rules of harmony and the rigours of etiquette. People, new, strangers, brothers, spur-of-the-moment. This poem showers us with the bracing feeling that comes from human relations and physical contact. The warmth, the shiver, the comfort, the exposure: meeting others, celebrating, making that first simple step, letting true spontaneity happen. Poetry of openness, inclusion, unity: a very healthy prompting these days, almost revolutionary. To the discovery of what really matters: the crunch on the sand that I make, that I am, is the same as yours, same as you are, and all together we got ourselves another issue of TCR!