Jaclyn Burr’s most recent poem to appear here was “My Mother’s Room” (September 2016)

The Harmonica
By Jaclyn Burr

Alone in this empty apartment,
I count the minutes
since my parents walked out the door.
Tears begin to bud
against resisting eyelashes.
Crawling into my pocket,
my hand grazes cool metal,
and I wrap my fingers around the harmonica
that my father gave me.

I remember him playing “Oh Susanna”
on his tarnished jewel of brass
while my mother stomped her foot,
like some old-fashioned movie.
We’d chuckle at the strangeness of this scene,
and afterwards, he’d let me try,
as we’d channel the spirits
of Springsteen and blues.

One night Dad called me to his room
and from an aged walnut wardrobe,
he pulled a harmonica of saffron silver.
He had a matching set of two,
and while his blew chimes of life through our halls,
clutched by hardy fingertips,
the other sat silently for twenty years,
awaiting my wistful lips.

My father’s gift:
Bells of nostalgia no words quite capture,
a partner—a matching instrument,
a love of music so intimate and infinite,
I will reverberate it,
to everyone I’ll know.

Alone in this apartment,
I run my fingers over lustrous letters:
“Bluesband” over brushed brass and silver.
I close my eyes and breathe softly to life
my burnished machine of mirrored chambers,
until I hear the velvet hum, like smoldering embers.

My father’s gift:
A depth and a sadness,
a tender understanding
of pain in the night,
bellows of empathy
that someday I’ll write.

These gifts,
tonight,
I’ll keep.