The Music Makers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

[Update, 26/9/2019: Aware that I do not use social media myself, readers often ask if they can post a link to any of my poems on social media or simply recommend any of my blogs by title. No, I don’t mind at all.  If you want to recommend, go ahead, and many thanks; the more readers, the more feedback. The only reason I do not use social media myself is because I am in my 70’s now and not well these days so simply do not have the time as everything takes so much longer; working on a poem can take days anyway, and there is always shopping and housework to be done besides regular visits to my GP surgery or the Macmillan Cancer Centre (for my prostate cancer) and replying to any feedback that gives an email address and has 'Poetry' in the subject field. (I ignore spam.)]

This poem, a kenning, has mysteriously vanished from the blog and I am reinstating it today by popular request.

THE MUSIC MAKERS

I am the lovesick composer at the keys

of a Stradivarius, the man or woman

swimming against the tide in a splendid

sea of laughter, wondering if maybe

he or she who taught them how to play

will come after them today, tomorrow,

or another time, sing a love song as old

as the sea in the ear of one who longs

for even more

I am the lark soaring to welcome the sun,

bringing hope to sleepyheads stirring

on tearstained pillows, man or woman

daring to trust in another, demanding

answers to questions haunting the mind

like ghosts striving to clear a pathway

to love for the living, lift the last obstacles

remaining, sing among larks and rise

into clear skies

I am the nocturne sent to lure us along

the Milky Way, leaving trails

few astronomers will rush to identify

for fear of exposing such secrets

as men and women have found in stars

reading like notes of a love song

since Creation, inspiration for generation

upon generation, signatures of nature

to love’s endeavour

I bring to the spirit of music and dance,

an expertise called Endurance

[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]