Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry: He Sees the Future

Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine Poet Laureate

In his recent collection Clubland, Camden?s Dave Morrison writes poems about musicians who perform in rock ?n? roll bars, as he himself once did. Here, a veteran bass player watches a younger player win over an audience that in earlier days might have belonged to him.

He Sees the Future by Dave Morrison

Her fingers flutter light, like butterflies.
The bass notes belt him like a boxer?s gloves --
amazing octave leaps for such small hands.
Watching her, his fingers fret ghost strings.
She?s pretty, sure, and young but that?s not why
he stands and stares and falls mutely in love.

Her body and the bass?s form a curve
that follows from her right hand to her left.
She looks as if she?s watching weather come
or trying to place a stranger in a crowd.
She lets herself become lost in the sound,
and now she?s trying to find her way back home.

She doesn?t seem concerned about the band
or audience; she plays for someone else
he remembers when his playing caused a stir.
Now that seems a long, long time ago.
He feels like a distracted dinosaur
watching the approaching meteor.

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Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2011 by Dave Morrison. Reprinted from Clubland, Fighting Cock Press, 2011, by permission of Dave Morrison. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to David Turner, Special Assistant to the Maine Poet Laureate, at poetlaureate@mainewriters.org or 207-228-8263.