Soul Drum

Listen— Can you hear how the cadence of verses Mirrors the patterns my fingers compose? How a poem's meter is just like a rhythm? How they both make the spirit expose? Some nights when I'm alone with my thoughts and my drum, I forget where the instrument ends and I begin. Am I playing the poetry or is it playing me? This ancient conversation of skin against skin. So let me tell you a story without saying a word, Let me speak to your soul through the beat. For when language fails us, rhythm remains, Making our communion complete.???????????????? When my hands meet the skin of the drum, Words rise up from somewhere deeper than thought. Each beat is a syllable unspoken, Each rhythm a verse not yet caught. They say the first poets were drummers, Their fingers tapping out stories against hollow wood. Before there were sonnets, before there were stanzas, There was the pulse, understood. when I find that pocket that space between silence and sound. Where poetry lives in the tension of timing, Where meaning is lost and found. I speak with my palms what my mouth cannot utter, The drum gives voice to the words I can't form. My soul spills over in poly-rhythms, A spiritual language is born.