oboe recital

despite how horrible i was at playing it
i loved the instrument. 
i craved the smooth keys & how they listened
to the softest touch. sometimes
on the floor of my bedroom i would
inspect each ligament. peer through
the vertebrae of my oboe like a telescope.
stars waved hello through my window. 
i was terrible mostly because
i was not fond of practicing. my tongue
was always too big for the double-reed
or maybe the reed was too small. 
when my teacher played i always thought
it sounded like ghosts trying to remember
how to talk. more often than i'm proud of 
i gave up all together in the middle of a concert.
i would hold the reed in my mouth.
poise my fingers, and play nothing
at all. move my hands as if the sound
of the whole fifth-grade band was coming
from the throat of my ghost. 
other kids shouted from their horns
& smacked the shoulders of their big drums.
i let my machine be the telescope. a hallway
without any fluorescent lights. my hands
getting bigger until they could carry
the moon. our songs were sluggish 
& strange. the work of a flock of geese 
misremembering all formations. 
after two years we gave my oboe back. 
it was just a rental. i missed it when it was gone
though i felt like maybe i had wrong it.
like maybe if i had wrestled with it longer
i could have gotten its voice & talked 
to the ghosts who emerged each night
from the corn fields around my house
in their own symphony of contours & dark.