Sonnet 8

I wish Mr. Opperman were alive and making bass flutes in his one-man 

studio/factory in downtown South Bend. I wish Sally, tiny and looking down,

were wrapped in the flannelest blanket when her mother died, not worry

as children of loss do. I wish Mr. Opperman's Romantic breath into all his flutes 

could still preclude the silvery sine wave regulated melody line 

of the Baroquely cloistered university apart from robust life 

where affection is most wanted. I wish young Sally did not have to cry 

with only brothers grown and her beautiful father left to comfort her 

in her pale little dress as autumn fell around her and the steps to the home 

where he later taught, brought the scent of burning logs of many yards, 

while suggestions of how to prime and keep the melody, not the flute, clean. 

Wear it out playing it as the belief in the staves: the quarter tones, 

the half, and whole tones held to the page then lifted to planned 

or emergent destinations the young might hear then play.