Waltz

Deep bass drum is the sound of time,
Like the steps of years marching on in line,
Like the pounding out of audacious hearts
In the face of silence. Music starts.

And I feel it yet, in my dancing soul
With the potent grace of a sound made whole
I can feel it build like the storm swept sea
And in brash sforzando break on me

In the womb it built me, beat by beat
As it traced its way through the first repeat
And suspended cymbal washed my face
As I spread my wings and I left that place

There are wind-chime tears and warm, woodwind smiles
And the traveling cadence, for miles and miles
And the high blue mountains on the far horizon
Rising up in the figured bass

I am lost in the beat, like an endless fall
In the dark unseeing, I can hear it all
In the spider silk staff I am wrapped and reposed
And it tickles my skin with its sound

Oozing off my chin like a honeyed sweet
Or the sugar dust feel when our blind eyes meet
The implosion of noise toward its purest form
From cacophony to voice

I am pouring out, I am drinking in
I am goose-bumps raised on trembling skin
I am diving toward ictus, and rising again
With the triumph of time in my eyes

I can spin in the air like the earth’s pirouette
And make shapes in the smoke like a jazz quintet
I can stir up your memories or make you forget
Like the color of love’s wide eyes

I am wind in the hair of the heart and mind
I can see in a way to which sight is blind
And I follow the beat toward the end of time
Where the universe reads “D.S.”