The poems in Music Lesson are organized into movements, rather like a symphony: Terrain, Love Note, Music Lesson, Long Ago, and Picture from the Group of Seven. In the title poem, Rembold writes: "Brahms, in order to console himself, / wrote about the meadow grasses, he wrote/ about tears seeding the wheat..." The movements in this collection encompass the seasons, years passing in the life of a family, losses and joys, the wonders of the natural world and of existence itself, leading the reader to moments of discovery