Music lessons, well, maybe 80 out of every 100 of us had them, once, and a few of us went on to play our chosen instruments all our lives. But the rest of us? I still own a set of red John Thompson piano books that haven’t been opened since about 1950. Here Jill Bialosky, who lives in New York City, captures the atmosphere of one of those lessons.

Music Is Time

Music is time, said the violin master.

You can’t miss the stop or you’ll miss the train.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,

one, two, three, four.

She clapped her hands together

as the boy moved the bow across the strings.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,

one, two, three, four, the violin master shouted,

louder and more shrill so that her voice

traveled through the house like a metronome,

guiding him, commanding him to translate the beat,

to trust his own internal rhythm.

Good boy, she said.

See how hard you have to be on yourself?

How will your violin know who you are

unless you make it speak?

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Jill Bialosky, from her most recent book of poems, Intruder, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, by permission of Jill Bialosky and the publisher. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.