Never learned to play a musical instrument
like a drum in a marching band,
wasn’t good at following others
around, timing steps and beats
together, plus my parents were
lower middle class (a nice way
of saying “poor,” so we couldn’t
afford live music, even had to dub cassettes
borrowed from my mother’s friends.
Took us a while to catch up
to CD’s. Now, my child dances
instead of talking (made it to
upper middle class, which means
there’s enough money to keep
bill collectors from calling,
and songs on my phone, paid for
by a credit card that’ll take
eighty some years to repay),
his words few and out of context,
but reminds me that some of the best music
requires no lyrics.
Richard LeDue currently lives and teaches in Norway House, Manitoba, Canada, where the winter nights are long and cold. This is why he writes so much poetry in the winter months, but he also hates the heat, so the summer months also prove productive. It is almost a guarantee that any of his work that speaks of nature is based on pure hearsay.