Listening to Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”
In my brother’s apartment
there is a poster of Louis Armstrong
holding his trumpet and laughing
sitting on the palatial steps of a hotel
he wasn’t allowed to enter.
My brother has finished lugging rocks for the day
and sits with his eyes closed, carried away.
And yes, it’s about time
for him to have some fanfare
for getting up at dawn’s first grayness
for sitting on someone else’s steps, laughing
not halfway, but wide open
with all his beautiful teeth.
“Listening to Copland’s ‘Fanfare for the Common Man'” first appeared in Bowdoin Magazine, Spring 2014.