Each month, the Manx Bard, Annie Kissack, shares one of her poems with us, and explains what led her to write it.

I spend a lot of time thinking about music, but trying to describe it, any sort of music, is really hard.

After all, it’s invisible, and wouldn’t stay still for long, even if you could actually see it.

Without words, or a visual image, you have only sounds to guide you and you need to make the narrative yourself.

Recently, I was walking down towards Scarlett on a lovely, warm evening, and was delighted to be followed by the music of the Castletown Band, not that the band itself was on the move at that time.

They were, no doubt, practising for a summer event but the sounds filled the air and made me smile.

How lucky we are to live on an island so rich in music.

Heard through an open door

The music of a silver band drifts down Queen Street.

It has a regal feel, processing

down this narrow, seaside road of cottages,

demanding its rightful due.

Listen! I come with trumpets, cornets too!

People glance from windows

but there is nothing much to witness today,

other than the blue and sudden view of the sea

soon glimpsed through gaps between the houses.

There are no cars, no cavalcades, just a tune.

Lovers on benches hold hands and smile.

Walkers stride past, sticky in the heat,

pretending not to notice, immune.

But the music of a silver band presses on

out through great thickets of red valerian

and the common flag-waving pink.

A wild, yellow rabble of rapeseed joins the ranks.

No gaudy deck-chairs here, but an audience is gathering

along the crumbling tarmac border and the upthrust shore.

Stand back boys, the music’s here!

They must be practising hard tonight,

packed tight there in the Band Room.

Tubas, horns, trombones are dripping, sweating,

fighting for space and air, some fretting

to be off the leash for it’s hot, but no stopping.

Deep and guilty as a slab of chocolate,

a stirring anthem of familiar sentiment,

melts into final chords both sweet and sad.

Out on the shrivelled seaweed, my nomad feet

crunch awkwardly behind the beat.

The music of a silver band calls out to all

beyond the rocky platforms of this town.

The wary heron perching at the sea’s edge

may hear it and deign to lift his head.

Those twisted fossil fish, cold-trapped in layers,

may hear and tremble at the passing of the years.

But the light is going now, and the heat of the day.

The baton is put down, the music fades away

into the tide which laps this flattened fringe of land,

leaving behind a memory of summer, and a thirsty band.

by Annie Kissack

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