All around her, we sounded melons, practicedat hearing what we couldn’t see, pretending notto notice when she stopped at the stall where the Amish
How she must have dreaded us and our sweaty coins, morethan we hated practice, the lessons, scales, the winter-hot parlor,her arthritic hands, the metronome’s awful tick. She lectured
I longed to teach the child the pinheaded oscillating glide of the turkey buzzard, nimble serene accipiter,