№1 Op 46

Photo by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

The second clarinet coughed,

And someone in the winds

Shuffled the pages of their score

As the trolls blinked themselves awake.

The plucking of the strings

Began in the cellos,

While the bassoons droned their lazy warning,

And the monsters sharpened their knives.

By the time the French horns cooed their arrival,

The violins had joined the frantic pizzicato.

I could feel the hall burbling with menace,

Then Maestro’s baton pointed, and it dropped.

I could just hear the oboes

Over the booming tympani

And the crashing cymbals,

Fear’s breath standing up the hair above my collar.

The frenzy of sawing bows and nodding heads,

Cheeks puffing maniacally,

Made waves of notes almost too small to count.

The ogre touched my arm.

I laughed a laugh of sheer, terrified exuberance,

My voice chasing the last silence chasing the finger-muted drums,

As I burst from the cave into the rising lights of the dress circle.

The king recalled his guard, scowled at me, and shut the massive door.