Because I am ten years old and unashamed,
Because I've played the trombone for a year
And can read songs from a book of standards,
I walk off our porch to play Auld Lang Syne
At midnight to my family's applause.

My parents must know that a year from now
I will refuse to play for our neighbors,
But this is how we spend the first two minutes 
Of 1956, the year before 
I worried about sex and God’s absence.
 
I am as confident as the flood light
That illuminates the black, simple notes
And casts shadows so dark on the driveway
I can see the slide extend and retract
Like the sluggish tongue of an ancient frog.

My father is about to be thirty-eight, 
His nails, even on off-days, black with work.
That evening, he knows his bakery 
Will fail, groceries filling with cheap bread 
And cake mixes easy enough for fools.

My mother's body is beginning to sag
With the weight of her collapsing thyroid 
And the heavy numbers of blood pressure, 
But she smiles and begins to sing the words
Like someone who expects to recover.

The snow, I imagine, is softening
My tone, making me sound as mellow as
The horns of Guy Lombardo, what the rest
Of the world kisses along to unless
They have stumbled outside at midnight, close

Enough to catch my song, hearing something
Like resolutions flung into the air.