Soul Music

 

Start in Africa

Carry through to the Caribbean

To New Orleans

Then travel up to Detroit

And with a kind of partnership

In New York and Nashville,

You have soul

 

The other kind, we know

From long ago

When breath entered earth

To form a person, rising

 

Was there music in the garden?

I think there must have been

A shame that in a lull

Between certain movements,

The serpent talked with Eve

And then Adam

All too easily

Fell, too

Then there must have been a kind

Of silence for a time

In mourning, angels set to guard

Then maybe once emptied of us,

Music returned to Eden,

Which was its nature

 

It we listen, will we hear it,

The music in our souls?

Back in Detroit, maybe

Or in the backyard,

Where a picnic turns to small

And loving concerting

For the family

And for friends

 

It might be gone or hidden

(hiding’s a kind of gone),

But like the soul

The music might be found again

Turn to archaeologists,

Turn inward

We can have it

We can play it all

 

C L Couch

 

 

Last concert of Ray Charles at Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier of the Place des Arts during the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in 2003. Photo by Victor Diaz Lamich.

Victor Diaz Lamich, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3606167