Recorder Scales: C major

Recorder Scales: C major

Confident, I take up the recorder again,
discover the smooth plastic on tongue and lips
evokes once more that dusty, sunlit classroom;
five of us struggling in a clumsy finger war,
getting them, contorted, into twitching place.
As I recall we never knew if we were right,
being asked to play songs from a century before.

Becoming interested, I hunt down the book ,
and open it, study the patterns on staves,
gather instinctive old muscle memories
forgotten like the dots that jump about the page.
Every note of me concentrates until quite soon,
dimly, I see how I’ll never get the thing right,
caring now more about the memory than the tune.


Peter Keeble