The bone drum

Peter Metzner

The bone drum                                                    

On my living room floor sits the Bone Drum.
One Christmas, long ago,
my bright flaming son Peter,
all of seventeen,
brought home this gift for me.
A slit drum of wood, meticulously carved
so that the rounded joints of the bone
play tones!  One side minor,
one side major, all interlocked,
drawing the player into a numinous soundscape
of warm, rounded maple.
In another room, in a small wooden box
are little bones, tiny pieces of bones
too big to burn in cremation’s fire,
all that’s left of my bright flaming son.
How this world is a mystery!
My bone drum speaks from my living room floor,
calling, calling,
saying, “Play me! I am not just pieces of maple,
polished and pretty.
I will carry you with my magic tones
beyond and beyond and beyond.”
My son’s bones sit in their tiny box, calling to me too.
“Fly, Mom, fly!  We are not just bones! 
We are so much more.
We rise like the Phoenix in orange and gold.
From this one tiny point, this bone, this life,
we expand, we dissolve into everything!
We are everywhere, Mom, do not forget,
Augra was right, I’m the drum, I’m the tree,
I’m the eyes of a child, I’m a doorway.”
Out of this amalgam of minerals and ash,
borne from the shape of bone and drum,
we fly, we fly, we sing!




Annelinde Metzner
November 16, 2012

The bone drum