Rise – a Waltz

Rise all you dead men and pound on your plots,
Take to your saws and your fiddles, your pots;
Take to your hammers and riddles and sighs;
Bang out dirt music, pound the black skies.

Dance with the vermin that scuttles the floor.
Soft shoe the sand then cast up from the shore.
Screech to deaf heaven the owl in your fume,
That beckons you sing of toil and tomb.

Uncoil the vipers and stretch them as strings,
On planks, on washtubs upturned in the springs.
Pluck then for verdance and blast into shells,
Hymns of our labors and varying hells.

Rise all you dead men that children may hear,
A withering tooth, an off-centered gear.

Image: Débora Rousse on Unsplash

3 Thoughts

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