Playing the Flute after Long Absence

Jan Seale

August 8, 2021

The silver is the first to hear the tone

and then the lip decides it too can like

the mellowness that slices like a knife

the silent air on which the note is blown.

The player feels the burden all alone

to shine the tarnished piping back to life.

Strangely, as the notes pile to the light,

the tune, like water, seeks its own.

The fingers gain a temporary cure

from arthritis, dull procrastination;

the embouchure minds its reputation.

Sculptured sound recalls it can be pure.

It cancels out the sin of hesitation,

restores the flutist’s sonorous sensation.

Jan Seale, the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate, lives in Texas on the U.S.-Mexican border. She has held a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in poetry and has served as a Humanities Scholar for Humanities Texas. Her latest book of poetry is PARTICULARS: poems of smallness, published by Lamar University Literary Press.