Rave Notice

Dark fingers rained a thousand captured chords
Ranging like restless fireflies under glass
Gathered notes in freakish trilling hordes
Offering the Danse Macabre pass.
Sensuous and delicate on the keys
Before the great unmoving cause
So arranged to haunt the sad demise
The pallor over pasted triplets falls.
Restive sighs are pierced by plunging swords
Of dissonance, the soul cannot appease
His thunderous triumph, ovation soon affords
The master well-deserved, if outlandish, fees.


['Rave Notice' first appeared in The Hoosier Challenger,1968; written c.1967, it was reprinted in The Lady in the Pink Hat, Candor Press,1969.]