It was a “Letter from

Home” that made

him so sad.

He stood in the kitchen

and the tears began

to form to

the horn’s mournful cry –

a mother to her son in

1944 somewhere in

harm’s way?

A critic wrote, wistful.

Copeland’s own longing –

that of a single man from

his flat in New York

but spoken in folk tune,

middle America

plain speak?

Longing, a universal chord

is struck – longing,

yearning for that which

is so far away in time

and space but so near

to a breaking heart.

The music crescendos

fortissimo and cascades

to the still, soft, simple

strings of everyone’s

heart – longing

in the deep, quiet, achingly

long notes of the clarinet, then

the passing of everyday

chit-chat to mask the

yearning, petitioning,

praying. A young girl’s

note to a mother missed

so much?

In an apartment somewhere,

everywhere, a lover pleads

with the Beloved,

“Please come home.

Please.”