an evening out at the reading

you gather in the back room
beers in hand attitudes in check
silent as the damp grass at night
hopeful as the lost child in the woods
that the sun will rise, a lofty note
on the crescendo of an aria
that for the moment it exists
fills an emptiness you live with
without knowing, until the song
of songs plays and the bow rubs
an harmonic and someone turns
up the volume. that’s when you
realize there can never be enough
sound to fill a room, never
enough sense in a moral tale,
never your character in the fable
to show you the way to the door.