For the dverse prompt.
Painting by Franz Marc.
Taking the quote à contre pied.
“As if we could hear music inside the words” Gail Newman from the poem Trust.
Wordless the songs
the fluted whistle swooping swift as light
flash-on-the-pane
grass quivers
branch trembles
and gone.
I strain in vain to hear the words
in the different strands of sound,
staves staked in morning grass dew-heavy,
booming with the memories
the shadows make
of night just past,
a harp chord echoing on the hills
where cocks crow unmusically
bullroarer and trumpet-voiced.
Wordless the songs to human ears
but what music, beak-tongued,
eloquent as stream babble,
hooved feet
tapping careful cadenzas,
squirrelled grace notes
tripping from tree to tree,
and the light pat-pat punctuation
of fox paws
through drifts of muddy leaves.