Elegy to SRV

I was fourteen

When the sound leaped

From the speakers like flood water

And robbed my heart a beat.

But the same tones

That stopped my pulse

Revived me so to speak in ways

That only legends claim.

Greater than myth,

This was music.

Its powerful, raw intensity

Could conjure storms and rain

And shouts and tears

As ears it pierced

Beheld its volume and its weight.

The presence he achieved

Still shakes my bones

As though fault lines

Meet and erupt beneath my feet

Amidst a hurricane.

While I listened

Landscapes were carved

Across the surface of my mind.

Not just music, this was

Pure, honest blues,

The kind that speaks.

Shaped by tradition, it withstands

The test of time, and lasts.

I needed more,

And more I sought

To hear and see and feel much more.

This drug was in my veins.

And when I heard

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Had in fact strummed his final chord,

I didn’t mourn.  Instead,

I rejoiced that

The six stringer

From Texas could at least live

So close to my own time.

Hindsight

I can’t imagine how I would survive without sight,

How I would make it through the day without

Dawn’s light having first passed through my eyes.

Would I walk at noon through midnight fog

In a haze composed of only constant darkness

That will last until I inhale my final breath?

Or could I somehow stare into the sun,

Unaware of its crimson glow but still able

To see the colors it reveals beneath its rays?

There must be some way to take the black tarp

And transform it into a painted canvass,

To put murals in the place of a screen.                                                                          

Sight may not be an option to experience color,

But memory is an immortal pallet, is it not?

Aided by the four remaining senses,

Nostalgia could restore my tarnished vision.

The warmth of the sun on my flesh

Would generate shades of red and orange,

While the taste of fresh lemonade would

Compliment Apollo with a yellow crown.

The scent of mountain pine and oak would

Infuse my nostrils with every hue of green,

But still the color wheel is not complete,

For how would I see my love in all her tones?

I would first acknowledge her presence

When her voice and perfume ensue

An overwhelming collage of blue and violet;

Her touch would renew the colors of my youth.

During morning drives through the meadow

I would exhale upon the icy glass,

Forming sheets that eventually dissipated

And revealed the colors of the world.

Calamity Rising (revised)

The Day of Judgment claims the setting of this play,

Where the sun once bequeathed is soon to flee the day.

Stage right, the devil waltzes to the angel’s lute stage left,

While mortals rise upon the bridge to hear their morning debts.

Vermillion skin or golden wings seduce their haughty eyes;

They flock to their enchanters and prompt the sun to rise.

So begins the final morn as the rapt approach their fate,

But curtains draw to center stage where a reprobate remains.

The director instructs the audience to applaud with false avail,

While wail at noon he does instead to cast the wretch to hell.

The outcast, now disgruntled, finds his temptress behind the stage

Has ensnared this early eve the lead by whom he was replaced.

Twice rejected and one scene elapsed, he plots to turn the tides;

Before dusk he joins a vengeful troupe to help him in his plight.

These actors are only parcels of the playwright’s teeming cast;

Tonight they seek to take the pen from the dead hand of the past.

The director, who through the day subjected them to pain,

Is unaware, with the moon’s ascent, his puppets will invade.

A hairbreadth from sundown, the usher heeds the threat,

But the audience, in haste and in horror, has already left.

Finally falls the sun as planned by other than the rightful hand,

And the play, now among the damned, dissolves into the darkened land