FIDDLE, BANJO, and GUITAR

Open windows carry the sound of

A fiddle and banjo played louder

Than the cicadas’ drumming songs

Or the hoot owls’ calls

For Saturday Night revelry

In overalls and house dresses

Damp with summer’s long days. 

A guitar, slung over the shoulder,

Rests on a knee bent for a low chair

And pillows spread out on the floor

In a candle light’s golden glow.

Bare feet and the light-fingered strum of

New-born songs wander onto a balcony

High above the street with voices raised

To roof top rows

In a moonlight’s somnolent flow. 

Unrecorded rhythms and rhymes

Set to air and left to thread their way

Unguided across the girth of stars,

Unleashed to rise and fall,

Spread out to fields and alleys,

Sail towards a horizon

Where some standing still and far away

In the night

Might hear a phrase that

Has never been played or sung

Before or after. 

 

© cmheuer, 2018

RIVERSIDE

To sit beside a river near the lap of shallow waves

where water smooths out the sand.

In the distance a deep channel

carries motor boats and mariner winds

up and down the currents for the pleasure of it,

for the bounce of the bow,

for the dip of the stern,

for the stiff blast of air against the face

that drowns out phonetic sounds with a motor’s roar.

To sit in the middle of a river on a dry boulder

where water rushes past large stones.

Wild, overgrown banks are set in motion  

by wind-blown branches,

shores are close enough to call across,

a bridge is low enough to see

anyone standing beside the river bed,

and it is shallow enough to walk across

when there are long droughts and dry wells.

To sit on a curb and watch river water

flood historic districts and tobacco warehouses.

Its overflow rises to the tops of street signs

that serve as underwater map pins

set afloat like channel buoys

to mark bateau boats unearthed,

slave auctions hushed,

warehouses burned, and  

African American burial grounds paved over.

To sit by a riverside remembered

and pause the water’s flow.

©  cmheuer, 2018