A Music Teacher’s Seasons

Thomas Hemminger

May 5, 2024

Music teachers start their year in autumn. 

Folk melodies and harvest colors float around

fresh faces in new clothes singing of 

Simple Gifts and being Homeward Bound. 

As the weeks goes by, 

xylophones become dancing bones, 

and bouncing balls are Great Pumpkins 

keeping beat with tempo games. 

Magically, music morphs from

Halloween to Herald Angels

and snowmen Walking on the Air. 

Holiday carols and peppermint sticks 

decorate our time sliding in to 

the Season of Light and Silent Nights.

We take a break, 

for a short winter’s nap, 

and before we can blink

it’s time to come back.

Raspy recorders remind us that 

Birdsongs are beautiful, like flutes fluttering

between the tree branches overhead. 

Songs about growing recall

the meaning in “Kindergarten”,

each child, like a flower, is

beautiful and unique in their own way

as they reach for the sky 

when spring speeds in to the Month of May. 

Finally, the year ends in Summertime, 

a surprisingly quiet season for music teachers, 

though just as important in the cycle.

We have to remember that songs are 

both sound and silence, and that

“Music is in the space between the notes.” 

Thomas Hemminger is an elementary music teacher living in Dallas, Texas. His work has been published locally in Dallas, as well as in The Wilda Morris Poetry Challenge, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and The Poetry Catalog. His personal hero is Mr. Fred Rogers, the creator of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. It was through America’s favorite “neighbor” that Thomas learned of the importance of loving others, and of giving them their own space and grace to grow. The last line of the poem above is based on a quote attributed to the beloved Impressionist composer Claude Debussy.