Drumroll

A recollection.

lonely surfer riding waves in stormy sea

And then came the memory of someone who so loved the world that they could not stop highlighting her face, who at every turn of the gaze would find her silhouette made flesh and lean into its pliant give. Whose ear, tuned to eavesdrop on dream music, would lift a lucid pen and point it toward transcription of the tattered ends of her beloved robes. 

Who kept flying home, crying home, and singing her back, the jazz ache of her grief’s webbed movements and polyphonic breaths keeping time with the ancients at the drums, past the trembling where words won’t go, these nested rolls yoked to something just beyond the reach of the given ear, where the pattern of beats becomes so dense that–––

 it collapses, 

absorbing our cries 

back 

to some original 

sea.

Author: Stacey C. Johnson

I keep watch and listen, mostly in dark places.

6 thoughts on “Drumroll”

  1. Well darn it that’s different. Good good good to try new paths through the woods. Wow and wow. I like most the keen use of words and rhythm you get throughout. That’s gorgeous. Inspired and inspiring.

  2. This is weird. Your ending brought to mind the end of Land by Patti Smith. So I went and checked out those lyrics and I can’t see a similarity except the sparseness, so it must be that. But still, IMO, it’s pretty cool to be compared to what I think is the greatest song written.

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