Anon

I’d like to speak music to one long dead

The grandfather gone before I was born

Who could hear a tune, recall and sing it

Decades after a single encounter

Music was his being, heart ruling tempos

That let him sing songs no one else heard

Propelling the rhythms that pitched his life

Past marriage and work and love

After two generations might I hear those notes

Speeding my pulse to the love of another?

Or is memory lost except to the eye

The image that pulls you in before hearing

Did that great eye knife into his chest

When he sang and fell and never rose up?

Or heard he a break in his heart’s drumming

As his life stopped?

Perhaps his eyes filled with light

Chasing out all his songs?

Perhaps one day I too will know