A Music Lesson

The guys and I were hanging outside the pizza parlor
in the shopping center parking lot shooting the shit
on a Saturday night when Levi walked up to join us.

Paul noticed drumsticks poking out of Levi’s jeans
back pocket and said,
“I’ve seen people play air guitar, but never seen air drums.”

Without a word Levi pulled out the set drumsticks, twirled
them deftly between his fingers and began to strum
the hood of my blue Volkswagen Bug.

He started with a steady drum roll tapping the windshield
and alternating with the fenders for new sounds to go
with the synchronized rhythmic beat.

He continued the drumbeat along the side of the car on
the doors, windows and roof.

Without a pause, he jumped across to Leo’s old wooden
flatbed pick-up truck with two five gallon paint cans
secured with bungee cord, drumming back and forth between
the wood bed and plastic cans.

He turned back to my Bug juggling the drumsticks without
missing a beat or note, binging, banging and bonging around
to the rear of the car and along the bumper then tap-tap-tapping
across the pavement and up the wall to the payphone with
a pat-pat-pattering, he stretched over to the store front window

beating the aluminum frame, tinging and tanging the glass
he spun toward Charlie’s ten-speed Schwinn bicycle, playing
the front spoke wheels, up the forks to the handlebars, across
the frame, pounding the pedals, thumping the seat and down
to the rear wheel spokes.

Then with an arabesque, he twirled back for a crashing
crescendo on the hood of my bug.  Ba-ba-boom!

When he was done he weaved the sticks through his fingers
again slid them back in his pocket and said,
”Everything every-where possesses music, like every atom
possesses latent energy and all you have to do is set it free.”