To Capture the Breeze

My uncle Richard was a Librarian at the National Library. At one stage, he was the Keeper of Ephemera (not a real title, but that was the way I imagined it). He wrote a book about the collection. It could have been titled, 'To Capture the Breeze'.

M3U Playlist

1. To Capture the Breeze

4:21

To Capture the Breeze

Song of the Day

[sparse fingerpicked guitar, low cello drone, paper rustle in the distance]
A box of paper. A careful hand.
Things that were never meant to stand.

[Verse 1]
A tram ticket from a Tuesday rain,
Section three, the Carlton line,
A halfpenny fare, a thumbprint blue,
Punched and pocketed in '52.
He smooths it flat beneath the lamp,
A catalogue mark, a careful stamp.

[Chorus]
To capture the breeze,
To hold what was meant to be lost —
A folio of weather,
A library of frost.

[Verse 2]
A postcard sent from Sorrento Bay,
"Weather fine, the children well" —
The hand is gone, the children grown,
The bay still there, no-one to tell.
Opera programs, menus, fliers,
Mass cards for forgotten choirs.

[Chorus]
To capture the breeze,
To hold what was meant to be lost —
A folio of weather,
A library of frost.

[Bridge]
[cello rises, piano enters]
History keeps the kings, the dates,
The treaties, the embarrassed states.
But what an ordinary Tuesday wore —
The font, the price, the second floor —
Lives only where the small things stay.
He turned the small things every day.

[Instrumental Break]
[guitar and cello, no vocal, eight bars]

[Verse 3]
He wrote a book about the lot,
A taxonomy of what is not.
Postcards, tickets, paper saints —
The breath the photograph cannot.
He knew the paradox, of course:
The breeze, once caught, is something else.

[Final Chorus]
[fuller arrangement, harmony enters]
To capture the breeze,
To hold what was meant to be lost —
A folio of weather,
A library of frost.
(He held what was meant to be lost.)

[Outro]
[piano simplifies, cello holds the room]
(He closed the folder.)
( Turned off the light.)
(Outside, the breeze was moving on.)