April is poetry month. I thought of this poem I wrote years ago, for Andrew’s last high school chorus concert. (The school colors were green and yellow).
A Sonnet for Seniors Singing
for the U-High class of 2002
In green and yellow music time you hear—
if you’re a parent—childhood float away
with every lyric note. Its echoes lift
a wish for more: more madrigals, more jazz,
more Bach, more Billy Joel, more freshman year
when they began, and you were younger, too.
Composers know their songs belong to time,
and so do singers, fathers’ fondest scores.
One person cannot make a chord. One chord
will make an empty song. One song is not
a concert or a life, which needs the whole
of harmony: a choir. So, seniors, sing
the past into the now, all notes, all times,
all time to come, all hope, all dreams, all love.
–Doug Hesse