Around my block
crows berate,
busses bray
lawn mowers growl
neighbors kvetch
bumble bees perambulate
incognizants plod along in a line
sunk beneath dreaming.
My banjo helps to seine the day’s
news from between the noises
a hardened heart
a wandering wife
a sunken fishing boat
a new car
a lost job.
Slowly it starts to ring
first plinking along in sorrow’s key
then brightly tin-hammered
then ringing like sunshine on cotton fields
ringing like John Henry
banging away at the pit face
of that coal mine
where by God no steam drill
can stop him can beat him
baby it rings like silver
all the way to Canaan
glory hallelujah damn.