Music Practice

The boy who lives across the road

is playing his recorder over and over.

I am trying to recognise

the phrase he keeps repeating.

He is playing it slowly, again and again.

I know that I know it.  Then finally

I put the single, spaced-out notes together:

Jingle Bells revives in my memory,

carrying me back to when I was a child.

He doesn’t make it jolly. He doesn’t

connect the notes into a tune, not really,

and he plays it mournfully slow

so his bells don’t jingle — but,

if he keeps on practising, perhaps

his music will be dancing by Christmas.

Meanwhile I resign myself to all the weeks
when, inadvertently, perforce, I must listen.

31 Poems in 31 Days (Poewar / Writer's Resource Centre). Prompt: use a verb in every line