Celebration Station! Tony Brown

Day 27

Days of Steam

A Sestina By Tony Brown

Sing to us an age of steam
speak as the clockwork muses spoke
by boiler’s glow and electric arc
beguile us as the mainspring winds
measured there by every tale, a turn
of some great rotor spinning, freed

And oh what songs might then be freed
in iron and glass and rising steam
pushing pistons to flywheels turn
such rapid spins that blur their spokes
and make us breathless by their wind
that we might see the coming arc

Nestled there, within our ark
around us gears are caught, then freed
each straining from its own tight wind
or driven by the building steam
whose billows puffed and whistles spoke
the motive urge at every turn

Growing wild as measures turn
Every gauge a reddening arc
Remind us how the lightning spoke
in sudden flashes first and freed
its rumbles where the storm-heads teem
with dark clouds rushing in the wind

Flung through walls of scattered wind
our tiny capsule now up-turned
with vision lost to clouds of steam
falls in its true but fading arc
not yet forgotten and not freed
from the promises that Newton spoke

The slowing wheel reveals each spoke
seen clearly through retreating wind
belts loosen and are from pulleys freed
as rotors make their final turns
and we emerge as from the ark
to wonder at receding steam

The muses spoke and showed a turn
of a winding key, which in wider arcs
might coax yet more be freed, to live again in days of steam

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***** 

First, there was darkness. The earth was void and without form. Sometime later, Tony Brown dropped out of college. His interests include cats and those little things no one knows the names of.
You can find him on the web at: http://www.facebook.com/tony.brown.3910



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