I send down cool sounds

When I was in the seventh grade our English teacher (Mrs. Harrison) asked us to take a poem from our textbook and do something with it, like draw a picture or set it to music. I chose to set the poem in our book about music to music. I had my mother's old piccolo, an Adler that didn't really work well, and I wrote a little melody using the low register, the only register I knew, because the fingerings were like the recorder. My friend Deb did the reading of the poem over my piccolo playing, and I believe we made a recording on a cassette player. The poem as we knew it had been seriously shortened.

I woke up this morning with the melody in my head, and eventually found the poem and poet on line.

The poet is Carl Hines, and is still living (in Indianapolis). Here's the full poem, which I found here:

This is the portion that was in our book:

Yeah here am I am standing at the crest of a tallest hill with a trumpet in my hand & dark glasses on.

Bearded & bereted I proudly stand! but there are no eyes to see me. I send down cool sounds! but there are no ears to hear me.

Deb and I had no idea what "bereted" meant, or that it might have been a play on the word "berated," since the reference to a beret comes later in the poem. We were too young to understand, anyway.

The tune? I only remember the first line. I no longer own a piccolo, so a violin will have to do.

Here it is.

If Carl Hines happens by this post, I would like to say a big "thank you" for giving me the courage to respond to a poem (or portion thereof) musically.