Today a moment of epiphany
like falling headlong down a flight of steps
announced itself all glorious and bruised.
Should we redefine what we call ‘music’ –
reconsider how we categorise
and file it in the index of our minds?
In the garden the sound of birds reminds
me – as I strum upon my Epiphone
electric – it’s wrong to categorise
this art as one path walked by human steps
alone. But that’s nothing new – the music
of hedgerow birds leaves great composers bruised.
No, there’s more to this than the timbre used
by joyous larks trilling out of their minds
at dawn. Think as well of stranger music:
a hatching egg’s fanfared epiphany,
the waves surfing down a millipede’s step:
there’s so much music uncategorised.
Abstract sounds – tyres pummelling cats’ glass eyes
on a country road, purple tarmac bruised
by drumming weather, the unceasing step
of storm to sun, the pulse of beetle minds.
Each tide’s exodus: an epiphany
of scrubbed shingle – the shoreline’s bright music.
Trees groan at a seismic rate, their music
unknown to our ears, just categorised
as susurrus: the fencing wind’s epee
fanning through the foiled and gilt-edged leaves, bruised
by Autumn’s gales. Such music out of mind,
to us, remote as winds on Russian steppes.
These sounds all have internal rhythmic steps
some so complex we don’t hear the music
or comprehend it with our untrained minds.
We’re inclined to manmade categories
and other concepts leave our egos bruised.
The Earth’s wide song is Man’s epiphany.
