"Band Practice" [by Terence Winch]

                Band Practice

We have three bottles on the kitchen table.

One is filled with the music of a hundred old hornpipes

in the key of D that no one plays anymore. We drink

and play. Pretty soon they’re no longer hornpipes,

but tricky little reels from long-dead masters

remembered by no one but us. We play them

and they are like nothing anyone has ever heard

before now. Oh, the ins and outs and ups and downs

of them, like an old song the jolly ploughman

sings to the fair maiden at midnight under her

window, enticing her out for a forbidden fling

that will change her life forever. But pretty soon

all that’s left is an old waltz that we drag along

the living room floor by one foot till it falls apart 

before we even figure out the second half of it.

We never even get to the other two bottles.

Comments

[sarah gelder]

That's Terence Winch in the photo. But who's shaking his hand?

[Indran Amirthanayagam]

I too have shaken Terence Winch’s hand. Forgive me. It was warm and throbbing, a living ball of hope and flesh. Great poem, Terence.

[Terence Winch]

Bill Clinton's hand was as plush & meaty as a baseball glove. And he was always missing band practice.