Iain Kelly

It should be something inspirational, something to make the piece soar, a fitting climax to the whole movement.

He scratched his head, chewed the end of the pencil, let his fingers dance over a few keys until they ended in a terminal ‘thunk’.

It was no good. He just couldn’t find the right expression of hope when so much was going wrong: the pandemic; rioting and racism; political turmoil – and it showed no sign of getting better anytime soon.

Then there was his own life to worry about: the theatre was shut and redundancies loomed; his mother was stuck in the care home unable to receive visitors, and to top it off he was having to deal with the insurance company after the minor collision yesterday.

He stood and went over to the window. A gloomy, grey, cloud-filled sky greeted him, the perfect expression of his mood. There was inspiration for another deathly doom-laden symphony a-plenty, but that was not what he had been commissioned to compose.

As he watched the sky, high above, a perfect V-shape swooped into view: geese migrating for the summer in the south where they would breed. He watched them swoop past, admiring the controlled formation and order.

He felt a stirring in his mind. Notes in the shape of a dancing ‘V’, up and down, a lilting rhythm that started to build, then fell, then built again. He added strings to the piano notes, then woodwinds danced in and out of the lush, building crescendo.

He smiled and returned to the piano and began capturing the simple notes before they disappeared.

At least he had managed to finish. Whatever happened next could wait.

This is a response to the #writephoto Prompt: Soar curated over at Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo. Click on the link to read other stories inspired by the image.

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