Thursday, February 26, 2015

The poems keep a-rollin'... Days 24-26

I missed day 24.  The sound was that of a diver while videoing a green sea turtle.  I struggled with that one, drafted a few poems that never felt right, and reached the end of the day with nothing that I wanted to send in.  Ah well, one cannot be creative every day.

Day 25's sound was a Ugandan folk tune.  It was a frenetic song, played on panpipes.  I actually couldn't listen to the whole song.  But, in the bit to which I did listen, I heard sounds and rhythms similar to jigs and reels.  That led me to think about the commonality of music around the world, yielding this poem:

Listening to a Ugandan Folk Tune

In the panpipes' whirl of this Ugandan tune,
I see dervishes dancing to ecstasy.
I hear the frenzy of a jig or reel,
the familiar skirl of Highland pipes,
the atonality of an Asian song.

When our ancestors left the heartland,
did they carry a common tune,
whistled and hummed,
sung from band to clan
as they moved across the land,
carried down the ages,
coursing through our souls?



Day 26's sounds were from trains or subway cars.  I wrote a short poem, thinking of spring, open windows at night, and the sound of a train off in the distance:

Good Sleeping Weather

Spring peepers singing out back,
and in the distance,
a freight train's steady rhythm.

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