Learning The Last Song Of Summer…
*Note: I had this dream this morning that I had to get down, here’s the result.*
It was dusk on the last day of Summer as I meandered down Main
Street, filling my eyes with neon and party lights and the last indigo
rays over the horizon. The evening crowd was thinning for the dinner
bells of sidewalk cafes and patio tables, dining under soft old street
lamps after a day of carnival.
The Gypsy wagons were parked all along the streets with little
strings of lanterns strung between, and I spotted a wayward last August
firefly out of the corner of my eye, or so I supposed.
Suddenly from three wagons down the street, I heard what seemed a
mournful tenor saxophone bellow. I love the instrument, so I walked a
little faster toward the sound. To my amazement it was no saxophone at
all.
Between the parked wagons were some small tables and chairs, where
sat a band of Vaudeville hobos dressed for all the world like Red
Skelton on a Friday night. Each was holding a stringed instrument made
of painted tin like an antique toy full-grown. I had heard the cello
player warming up his strings.
I looked around in wonder at the bassist and banjo player and a
beautiful tin guitar in expert old hands, and they began to play in a
slow and mournful fashion, something like wind and distant thunder.
They were making little jokes of the people walking the street,
harmless really. “Look, Loquatius, that one’s so tall he could touch
the sky when he writes.” “Jedidiah, do you see that gal there in the
colors of a balloon on the clouds?”
I stood in the shadows a bit, looking and listening in wonder, as
they got in tune and played, Like grass grown dry and amber swaying in a
near-harvest breeze. “Call for Carmelina and Serenata, Cornelius.” I
heard the leader say.
Suddenly a young lady as beautiful as the moon led a bejeweled
elephant up to the center of the band, and the two began singing a
duet, Carmelina the elephant, and Serenata, whose name is Italian for
Night-Song.
They serenaded Summer off down the street without moving an inch, and
you could feel Jack Frost and his minions breathing on the road to town,
all the way from the North Pole they were coming, and you could feel
their steps on the road, steadily marching to the beat of the tin drum
by lantern light.
I walked up and sat on a street bench rapt and listening to the
melancholy pull of warm winds battling cool breezes. When the band
stopped on the last soft notes of their song, everybody knew that Summer
had surrendered, and Autumn was on her colorful way to town.
I walked up after and put a Finn in the leader’s tin cup, and offered
cigars all around to the band, cracked open my bottle of dinner wine
and poured the first glass for Serenata and then shared the rest with
the band. I told them my name was Poet, and asked them to share their
story.
“I can tell you a little.” said Loquatius, the leader of the Gypsy
band. “We found Serenata and Carmelina in a pair of milkweed pods, many
sweet Summers ago. Lady Summer told us to plant them by our campfire
as Autumn walked the land that season, and gave us the music to learn.”
“Play it for them as they rest in the Earth and grow through Winter’s
long cold days,” she bade us, “and teach them to sing the verse as
Spring warms you and they come forth and flower.” “Your song will hold
the Storm Demons of Winter from your camp, and Jack Frost will never be
able to do more than follow you.”
“So, you see,” said Loquatius, “We keep Winter and her cold-eyed
demons from us as we roam from town to town, and the ladies here have
learned to sing from the time they were wee seeds low to the ground.”
I looked at the warmth of my cigar cherry and the cheer of their
never-frozen camaraderie, picked up a tin fiddle, and joined the End of
Summer Tin Man Band, being sure to keep my pen and journal close to
hand.
AquarianM
By” Daniel A. Stafford
(C) 08/13/2012
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