Music

A Poem by Kherry McKay

Music often awakens the soul.

Music

Night
outside the window
the wind chimes: three notes,
over and over,
play randomly like life’s motif
- abc, bbc - all night
hollow wooden tones
heard from beneath a black coverlet.

Does he know his lifesong?
Can he mallet the melody?
- cab - an aria for getting up
- aab - the hero’s theme.

If he gets up,
throws off the comforter for a Comforter,
will the noise stop? Will his life start
if he responds to the doleful tolls?
Ghostly muted, flat
both sepulcher and dove to the ear,
each dong, life’s knell, vacant as a bell,
all commanding him
to rise to the potency of his own notes,
akin to the night thrush’s hymn
which makes the dawn
the morning of the next big

Move out from under the covers,
on to his writing desk
to the invisible room where he hides
his syncopated dreams
- cba, bcb, aba - on to
ideas (TONG TNG-TONG)

’til he gives in clangorous ways
a new gambang: a blues
that makes everyone cry
in the darkness and
makes some flutter
like a butterfly following
the earsplitting sound
of the moon sidling down
toward sonorous mountains
or the sun coming up to God’s marimba runs
at the vibraphone
Dem bones, gonna rise again!

He’s gonna surge and swell
- bca, aca - all day
until the last clapboard offers a lonely peal
and it’s time
to go onto heaven’s big stage
for the Grammy awaiting us

in Winter’s sky.

Take a look at more of Kherry McKay's writing in the Cafe!