“Sitting on Top of My Dad’s Tombstone” — a poem by Alan Yount

 

 

photo by John Cobb and Morgan Naies

 

 

SITTING  ON  TOP  OF  MY  DAD’S  TOMBSTONE

                   For My Dad, Thomas Yount

 

 

sitting on the top of my dad’s tombstone
          … in sedalia, missouri,

I was thinking
          of how much

we practiced
         our horns together.

you played clarinet
          and I was on the cornet.

It seemed forever
          we practiced:

all through grade school and junior high,
          you played so great.

I never thought
          that I would ever catch up to you.

but your playing,
         taught me your desire, to play better.

sitting there,
         on top of his tombstone:

I played a few notes, on the cornet
          of the song “back again.”

and I was thinking of
          and hearing

a great jazz legacy
          passed on

from my father
          to his only son.  

 

 

_____

 

 

 

 

 

Alan Yount lives on the north bank of the Missouri River, just south of Columbia, Missouri, and has taken poetic inspiration from boating and floating the river for many years. His poems have been published in a variety of publications, including Palo Alto Review, Roanoke Review, Spring…the Journal of E.E. Cummings Society, Apostrophe Magazine, Columbia College Journal of the Literary Arts, Modern Haiku, Pegasus Review, and Tidepool Magazine. Alan also plays jazz trumpet, and has led his own dance band. He is a direct descendant of the famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone.