#1263 - once

 

1263

17.vi.23

4.169

once

 

imagine a moon and no month

 

there was no signature of time

 

it’s often we were thought to be lunch

yet here to tell today

 

it was everyone just jamming

nothing was written down

 

and though we had the bison walls

a tune in the head was all

 

you’d have to guess from where you’d gone

 

it was pick up sticks

blow through any hole

no bottles back then

but

once it was the wind told how

and one might fart along

 

clap hands could have been a mosquito

theirs a sort of singing too

 

birds awed from trill to dusk

 

and the beak!  the maw!

what came out, untrained

heartfelt

 

thunder once

and more applause

 

you’d go along with the sky

 

you’d stretch a thing for twang

why not?

innids often, gut adjust

more nether music then

 

sea was a shanty itself

 

fish bright and well leapt

silver gold

 

it was the note held, bent

 

syncopation as we went

a chord when you came in

foot after foot fallen

then each, with other, found a voice

 

rustle of the leaves would suggest

 

we played the bones of our enemies

 

wet clay and time and memory

 

stood around the strings of fire

beat iron and we’d brazen it

 

tap keys

blow on the reeds

 

a parchment roll to tell the tune

some viny

noughts and crosses

 

who kept a baton eye to watch?

 

how once

and this was us

 

never stopped

 

we’re still jamming now