There Could Be Music

There is no counting the wrong notes,
the screeching sounds.
so awful, so off key
that you, and everyone around you winces.

And yet you persist, sure somehow,
despite all the evidence to the contrary,
that there is a song inside you,
a beautiful thing crying to escape

and each raucous note, each flawed melody
is beauty’s cry, the pain of desire captured
and desperate
to escape.

About this poem.

We fail. We fail again. There are it seems, countless ways to do it wrong, whatever “it” may be. Normal people would quit.

Ah, but the abnormal ones of us push through the thousand failures, to find our beauty. Persistence, as much as talent, brings us the things we want, be they art, love, faith, or mere things.

The picture was taken in Burlington, VT. It was in a Violin restoration shop. Who knew there were such things? Such beauty. I am afraid I took way too many pictures, but they were very indulgent.

Tom