overdue fines

collecting notes was a secret obsession long before GarageBand and and home studios butterfly-netted analog streams of consciousness and bedded them safely in ones and zeroes on ever expanding hard drives

in and out of a score like a cat burglar - except, of course, none of this was remotely illegal

my synesthesia was different; a piece would come on - classical, rock, jazz, whatever - and i'd literally see the notes in front of me

fat whole notes;
worker-bee quarter notes towing the line;
eights and sixteenths peppering some heat ~
ephemeral grace notes singing and dying and singing again.

one would inevitably call to me, and into the pocket it would go

~

my Muse couldn't get enough of her 'musical orphans' ,
letting them loose around the house and never *forcing* them to do anything musical unless they wanted to

most would find their way home through a hummed refrain, or
by hitching onto a piece from the radio or TV, or simply
drifting out the window on a cumulus kind of day where they'd get
picked up by a bird's ministration on the north end of a long unfurling breeze

the few that hung around were a curious bunch
all inflected with *something* from their original creators:
longing, pathos, curiosity or wonder

mostly, thinking that nobody would notice, i was ok leaving their pieces a note short.
still, some early evenings walking the dog, i'd catch a dropped note in a piece i was humming, wonder if there were other snatchers out there, and question the whole affair