The Makings of a Drum

Rise up,

you sleepy, wayworn worm,

shrug off your crusty jacket,

lift your eyeless head

to the beating sky.

Ten thousand hands have held you –

wake or sleep or dream –

and still

you seek the friction ridges

of yet another palm.

What is it, then,

that one blind snake

can teach another?

Light moves

(cautious, delicate)

between the shutter and the wall:

I have heard that daylight begins

in just such a tremulous,

uncertain commerce.

Somewhere, behind the mountain and the cloud

a sun is struggling in the nets of snow;

somewhere a heart has found 

the makings of a drum.