Slight Melodies Poem by Frank Bana

There are some on this earth who write so fast
that the world spins before them, the real world shaken
by the strength of their fiction, the elements disturbed
by the power of their creations and the churning of their talent.

I am not one of them....
No thousand-page novels teaming with characters
loving on the beaches and in the backstreets
with heartbreak, robbery
and the agony of families in need.

Yet my eyes burn with the same tears
when music is alive and pulsating in the night
when I think of a beautiful woman who may dance with me at the ball
where I stand against the wall with my orange drink
while the winds blow across the Achada
and the children climb on the rocks
when I sweep up my imaginings and throw them to the winds

when I begin to know how I will be ashes
in my little box, or under the salt sea
when I think how the folksongs are more permanent
than I, or my singing of them
how they so surpass my creations,
as they rise like mist
from deep wells of experience.

I cry pure tears unstained by hope or sorrow.
Sea breezes come to collect the moisture from my lashes.
And from these perfect small experiences,
not even to be aspired to,
Come other gifts to their existence –
Poems from a cheap pen
slight melodies from an expensive guitar.