Best Tympani Poems

FIRST MOVEMENT (Minor Key)

Times such as these test body soul and mind
So should our thoughts be pain and dark confined
Or loosed to concentrate on brighter things
Like furry puppies, flowers and girls on swings

In this bright morning sun as I roved out
Past village houses waking to...

Continue reading...

~ This poem is written in the 8686 syllable count style of one of my favorite Emily Dickenson poems, 'I Felt a Funeral in My Brain.'


'pon roiling sea a fierce storm brewed
  waves crashed within my veins
fueled by heady winds, they pursued
  to...

Continue reading...

Enchanted was I with a cloying scent...
whiffs of wild magnolia
mingled with the woodsy tang
of her lemon verbena perfuming the air
Like Samson's strength, the sun's threads of gold
were clipped by silver shears 
of an ascending pearlescent moon
         ...

Continue reading...

All music is relational
Even if the instrument itself is unconscious: 
Like tree leaves in a breeze
Telegraph their praise in God's presence,
Dot and dash an earthy hymn;
Like an earthquake whose rumblings
Remind you that in geological time
All that we think of as solid and whole
Shares water's properties;
Even...

Continue reading...

Enchanted was I with a cloying scent...
whiffs of wild magnolia
mingled with the woodsy tang
of lemon verbena perfuming the air
Like Samson's strength, the sun's threads of gold
were clipped by silver shears 
of an ascending pearlescent moon
          ...

Continue reading...

pitch black ...
like ink ... or drowning in oil
only she could breathe
barely ...
heart thrumming in her ears like tympani
it was all she could hear
thankfully ...
she had awakened from dreaming
a good dream, too
(though it was now gone from memory)
laying on her left side
she had first felt...

Continue reading...

...inspired by 'Portrait Of A Lady' by T.S. Eliot


On winter days the view outside is nebulous at best,
within, the furniture is as it always was, and I am waiting,
waiting for a glimpse of you to silence my equivocating.
Somber is my attitude, the light is dim,...

Continue reading...

THE NUTCKRACKER

Did you see it
Hear it?
Balanchine’s choreography
Tschaikowsky’s music
The New York City Ballet

Speak of dancing?
Speak of music?
Neither can describe art
It must be inwardly felt – 
     color and music extrasensory

Mathematics – Geometry comes close
You    a throbbing spirit
  ...

Continue reading...

Salubrious antipasto
Trimmed to be vociferous
Left without the tympani
Holding up a symphony
Greased well guaranteed articulate
Inundated synchrony
Molded into ebony
Gone on before the starting gate
Innate
Careening toward a screening
Where is all this the leading?
A gracious over-seeding
All sliding towards a feeding
In generosity I ate...

Continue reading...

There are concerts in the sky
playing cosmically on high—

be they grouping in formation 
or harmonious creation,

fashioned synesthetically,
astro-energetically,

with conclusion or collusion,
stellar scenes in grand profusion,

gravitationally steady, 
starry outbursts brilliant, heady,

like orchestral symphony
from the brass and tympani,

viols, woodwinds, (theoried strings),
to the charms a keyboard brings—

measureless concerti vast
merging...

Continue reading...

I slip in unobtrusively 
and take a seat in back, 
the orchestra is tuning up, 
I open up my pack 
and take a rolled up magazine 
with which to play along, 
conducting is a passion 
I have had since I was young. 

The brass, the...

Continue reading...

AT THE CONCERT

the magic moment
in that silence just before
the maestro’s down beat

when the tympani 
begins a soft roll
and the trumpets rise

just before contact
his bow about to touch down
this awesome silence

the last minute cough
those surrounding very still
la traviata...

Continue reading...

I slip in unobtrusively 
and take a seat in back,
the orchestra is tuning up, 
I open up my pack
and take a rolled up magazine 
with which to play along,
conducting is a passion
I have had since I was young.

The brass, the woodwinds and the strings,
the tympani...

Continue reading...

...inspired by 'Portrait Of A Lady' by T.S. Eliot


On winter days the view outside is nebulous at best,
within, the furniture is as it always was, and I am waiting,
waiting for a glimpse of you to silence my equivocating.
Somber is my attitude, the light is dim,...

Continue reading...

On winter days the view outside is nebulous at best,
within, the furniture is as it alway was, and I am waiting,
waiting for a glimpse of you to silence my equivocating.
Somber is my attitude, the light is dim, curtains at rest,
as dust mites dance, the clock...

Continue reading...