A moment in time

Today’s ask is to come up with a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event of some kind.

This month, I have tried respond to the prompts by looking at the resource, finding some inspiration and connecting it to the first thing that opened the wardrobe of my imagination as I climbed from the well of sleep . After a lovely country walk and Sunday roast yesterday I decided to just fling open both wardrobe doors and see what came out.

I’m not sure if this falls under the rubric of “music” but it’s played on instruments by people and marks an event – maybe it fits the brief then?

Let me know if it worked for you.

---

The aroma of yesterday’s wet dog enters the kitchen just before the peat-stained, matted ochre coat of its owner.

Her nails pat a ballet score across the hard-fired glazed terracotta tiles, before four legs fold in unison and the shaggy bundle collapses into the warm welcome of a sunbeam pool.

By the window, with its glass squares and flaky encasements lined with peeling paint projecting from them like white tree fungus, the kettle stands in cold sulky silence.

Soon it will be called into life, to herald the breakfast communion with its attention seeking whistle and billowing bellows of steam, forming a visual harmony with the cumulus cushions floating by.

In the yard, a taciturn cockerel sits in smug satisfaction preening his, he believes, glorious iridescent tail feathers having completed his day’s duty some hours earlier.

Apollo’s circadian chores began earlier still, allowing his golden orb to cast the capon into a shadowy silhouette matching the weathercock atop the church spire.

Where, from their vantage point the baby blue eyes of the Jackdaw can see signs of life emerging by yellow rape fields, sage and olive-green woods and along the black tarmac roads that draw staves to connect them with smoke seeping villages.

The smallest of the Crows’ feet pulse delicate taps on Welsh grey slates that match his well-defined nape.

Their beats echo down, past the cool cast iron chimes, along their smooth flax rope cords down to the windowless bell chamber.

Here, dangling like decorated tiger tail crotchets, the sallies await attendance with perfect stillness that contradict their imminent incantations.

The old oak door with its peaked arch top opens with its customary horror film creak, just as it did when Nelson last set sail.

The air is musty, like the underside of a bat’s wing as the pink of smooth and wrinkled warm skin enclasps the expectant woollen tails.

A strike peel splits the morning air with the lime juice taste of a Hornet’s sting, ears twitch and heads turn on cattle and congregation in recognition.

The place bell continues it solo call to the community, its voice flows over the schoolyard bereft of the shrieking squeals of children that will flood it like a river in spate tomorrow.

The other bells hum along in a tumbling roll like the steps of a rosy-cheeked farmer stumbling over cobbles on her way home from the pub.

The summons to attend takes flight down the High Street, past the closed down shop, where dust lays on shelves imitating the pashmina moss cloaks clothing damp rocks by the gurgling river where Dipper dip and silky Voles play hide and seek with ferocious foreign Mink.

Majestic timber giants of Oak, Beech and Cedar, grained and green with awe-inspiring stature stand to attention as ringing tones slip through their arms, stroking the notes with their leaves as they pass on through.

Doors open and close in time as the congregation heeds the beat of the temperate tune that defines an English rural Sunday morning.

And when the last toll slowly decays into a cloud-bleached sky; just for a moment, the whole universe falls silent.

---