( youngest is 18 today!)
A poem for her with a wish
to hear music that you never would have known
A poem for her with a wish
to hear music that you never would have known
To listen for.
The Rain Stick, by Seamus Heaney
Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk
-
Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly
-
And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,
-
Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next
-
Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires
-
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.
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