A Little Night Music
Disturbing. “Is there someone there ?”
What rides upon night’s lonely air
through frost and fog? A distant sound
at time of night when failing light
and want for morning near,
procured a sound heard by my hound,
my hound, so long of ear.
From hook a leash and winter shawl
to porch where silently we stood
to listen, listening intent. Across the fields,
from distant wood
a hint … peaceful, meanderings ?
It carries on the breeze.
Ears bent to woods, did we proceed.
Through crystallizing breath we stole,
marauding fields and fence until
a glade sheltering in the trees.
A bear on Steinway ivories
performing with her back to me
Mozart’s Night Music - pleasingly.
A Steinway deep in winter wood
with bear content to entertain ?
In questioning my sanity,
I asked aloud, “Precisely how,
how can a bear hit single keys?”
More to the point, accurately?
A creature graced with great of paws
and that was when she turned to me.
”On Steinways, I use only claws.”
Grandfather’s Tale
Old he was. As old as time
with pipe and beard and grey of hair
and on the pier we sat and there
he told me of the Captain, cursed
to roam the seven seas.
I was but ten and three.
With calloused fingers
he turned to another tattered page of age.
Your ancestor, grandfather said,
the captain and his crew.
The last page of the ship’s log read:
Tatters hang where once were sails
and rotting rigging drapes the masts.
A slime of sea on decks and rails,
ghost ship’s entrails are sailors passed.
The Master of the Dutchman, aye,
on rough seas rolling endlessly.
Ship’s company are wind and sail,
the helm I leave to shoals and sea.
Ship’s manifest, one passenger
and dark as eye of shark is she.
Ship’s cat, she roams the decks and hold
and cursed, we roam the seven seas.
Our course? All hands, forgotten men,
who’ll not see wives and home again.
We’re bound for oceans cold,
around The Horn, the lost, forlorn,
a tale, rusted cutlass old,
marooned aboard are we.
One day will come the Reaper, son.
The scrimshaw timepiece that Death wears
was carved into his wrist. The legend,
as time passes, the hands move.
A vengeance for his ship and crew.
A curse, the captain cut it there.
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