POEM: "Whomsoever Listens"

Whomsoever Listens

                                               for John Coltrane et al.


I. Acknowledgment

Who supplies your bread
The base is the bass 
To do with you
Or the blues

Ask what you did today
How did your soul fare
How did your shit fail
Explain that to your kids

Sky and abyss missing
The love supreme it is
Does it cleanse your soul
Do you acknowledge?


II. Resolution

We'll watch the sunsets
Under sunken properties
Intricate movements
Look to the metronome

A mine in Pannowonica W.A.
Limping back to my shack
After my 45-R machine drill
Had probed the earth all night

Drumming a resolution
To do no more harm, sure
To do no daylight harm, that is
A tentative arrangement chère


III. Pursuance

Pursuant to the facts
Up to the minutes
Not a moment to lose
Out in the darkness

Everything a moth
They be moving away
They be studying the moon
No path is straighter

The instruments
All those sounds
The railroad tracks
The susurrus of flights


IV. Psalm

It's a matrimony
Of feelings between
This impossible
And the next

The hills are distant
I don't hear any echo
Except distant falling leaves
One for everyone chère

No lasting memories
Worth the winds
The drum is bringing
You home again.


© 2011 Rob Schackne