Reunion

You wanted to get the old band back together.
But we didn’t even have a band.

All we did was
sit around and drink
and talk
and smoke.
We played music
but it was music other people recorded
onto compact discs
and then sold to us.

Yeah, we’d go to venues.
There were crowds,
not drawn by us.
And there’d be bands there,
but not our band.

None of us wrote any songs.
None of us sang.
We didn’t even have any instruments.

A reunion tour,
as you once proposed,
was never gonna work
because we were never all together.
We didn’t know it
but we were on the verge
of becoming nothing but old friends.

Now you’re gone
and the rest of us are texting,
emailing, sharing old photos,
even picking up the phone to talk.

What might have sounded to you
like music.

---

This poem was published recently in the Spring 2023 edition of The Florida Review. The poem was originally accepted in September of 2022. Somewhere along the way, the editorship of the magazine changed hands. The new poetry editor wanted the poem trimmed down. The poem had been rejected by fifteen other magazines before The Florida Review accepted it, so I wasn’t going to raise much of a fuss. I produced a trimmer version of the poem. That’s the version you see above. But for posterity’s sake, I am including below the version that was first accepted, a longer version to which I remain partial.

---

Reunion

You wanted to get the old band back together.
But we didn’t even have a band.

All we did was
sit around and drink
and talk
and smoke.
We played music
but it was music other people recorded
onto compact discs
and then sold to us.

These were the days not long after Napster
and well before Spotify.

Yeah, we’d go to venues,
you guys especially.
There were crowds,
not drawn by us.
And there’d be bands there,
but not our band.

We were
(still are)
unformed.

None of us wrote any songs.
None of us sang.
We didn’t even have any instruments.

A reunion tour,
as you once proposed,
was never gonna work
because we were never all together.

Back then
you’d ask someone,
Hey man, can you burn this for me?
And when he did, writing the name
on there in magic marker, it was a big deal.

Cloves, parties, kegs.
We didn’t know it
but we were on the verge
of becoming nothing but old friends.

You said,
We were all smart,
we were all talented,
it was right there,
we just didn’t grip it.

Now you’re gone
and the rest of us are texting,
emailing, sharing old photos,
even picking up the phone to talk.

What might have sounded to you
like music.