Chimes at Midnight

When I’m too old to toil too young to die

I’ll write some lines while my brain’s still spry

Not say in English gone fishing but Greek

a private joke only scholars find wry 

Sing to me muses in tongues I can’t speak

Tone poems in languages I can’t name

Crystallize images happy or bleak

so my words can attribute blame or fame

Translate your meaning so I get your drift

Let me hear your music framing your chords

Picture meaning in words I can make shift

into metrical patterns weaving your words

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

Tell me some tales you never told before

Tell what the future may take from its store

To challenge every species to find

a way forward preserving its own kind

From one day’s generation to the next

sunrise to sunset moonrise to moonset

high tide low tide morning and evening

never knowing what the future may bring

Some more sentient others much more dumb

some with levity cavalier hamstrung

by prejudice innate humor heartless

original sin anything worthless

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

Now make me bolder now make me stronger

Let me be ready to face a danger

Let me project my voice through time

Never let me struggle to find a rhyme

Or fill a line with requisite meter

Choosing my own form from time to time

Trampling iambic feet with anapests

Spontaneously spiking a spondee

Into the dactyl hexameter drone

And making it squeak with dubbed track of glee

Canned laughter cued on demand by a script

Written in the latest language fashion

Launched to the cloud from nondescript notebooks

Noticed by no one except by the swarm

Sing to me muse with voice universal

Each time I recite without rehearsal

Dick Russell © 2024

 Richard M Russell