Leaving the Music Behind by Yvonne Morris

Leaving the Music Behind

On occasional Saturdays, my father made pancakes
the size of dinner plates. Sometimes, he’d take down
a harmonica from the kitchen cabinet, play a perky tune
and bounce along to its jittery notes. A break for him
from his workweek at the glass factory. I asked him
on one such morning where the harmonica had come
from as my mother stood nearby. Her eyes narrowed
and her voice barbed, she answered for him. He took it
from an abandoned house in Germany during the war.
Dad’s face shifted into shadow. In that moment, I pictured
another family gathered, listening to a song I didn’t recognize
but knew. I wondered where they were now. Where had they
gone, leaving the music behind?

*

Yvonne Morris’ poetry has appeared in Beach Chair, Eclectica, ONE ART, The Galway Review, The Main Street Rag, and elsewhere. She is the author of Busy Being Eve (Bass Clef Books) and Mother was a Sweater Girl (The Heartland Review Press). She lives in Kentucky.