Loosely Swaying 

She waves to the conductor and hops down from the wall.

She can smell the Mississippi and she can feel a coming fog.

Drags her feet to her favorite corner where some fox is playing to a group of tourist.

Strumming a mandolin with his eyes closed. The cycle of fifths tattooed on his forearms.

Little eight notes where cheek bones meet lashes and his song, oh his song.

 

    “The day I grew to love her I was in a bow musty and dark. I was shackled ankle to wrist and starving. 

The pain of hunger stronger than the swaying nausea and the stench of my dead kin and the flies at every wound.

Sometimes the crew come down here to beat us or rape one of the women. I find myself watching intensely every single time it happens.

In the flicker of the flame her face remains unchanged, muscles clasp beneath the skin like the chains that bind her hands.

He spits when he is finished on the woman next to her and says see you tomorrow night, How do we breathe? I find myself gasping she finds the breath to sing.

 

Wood beams creaking men are yelling she sings on and on to calm us.

Masts are snapping wind is howling and she combines with it’s moaning. 

 

There was a moment time stood still , no wind did groan, no child did cry.

The cold Atlantic washed my feet I did recede into my mind.

Still, I could hear her voice trilling the notes as she were shivering.

Just after our eyes did meet I felt my own voice quivering.

I know now all of those years gone by had been designed for this meeting.

Our voices ripped a hole in space before her head were loosely swaying. 

Still deep beneath the mighty sea our heads are loosely swaying.”

 

The spectators whistle and applaud and she was fast in love with only a street to cross

but, the smell of her rotting teeth, made her ‘stead choose to flee.

He caught a glimpse of her and waved,

alas she did not see.