All music and merry,
your hands on the strings,
trading places and voices
and other fine things,
the cocktails passed,
don’t care whose is whose
’cause you’re all full of whiskey
and no one’s got shoes,
two gypsies wear top hats,
black leather and white,
while another keeps leaving
to check on the night,
one is a songbird,
her voice travels high,
and the player, he plays
with a smile in his eyes,
and the first flash of lightning
cracks open the sky
as the poets all gather,
some dead, some alive,
and tonight, the rain answers,
coerced out by Dylan
and Cohen and Jerry
and Ella and Gillian,
they stay in your pocket,
nights such as these
when something new happens
despite all you’ve seen,
and that is the magic
of friends round a flame,
where the truth tellers linger
and you’re so glad you came.
