You might have missed your chance to see Rome rebuilt
from rain-spotted blueprints and you may never
follow the ghost of a caravan hauling
silk indigo opium cotton or salt.
You might keep forgetting how rhythm is spelt

but there's a smoother way of almost falling
over to be discovered and you won't be
definitively estranged from levity
as long as drums can stop you looking for
a way to justify your antic spelling.

Resonant in your thoracic cavity
the bass is insisting even weary bones
were made to work loose like a dressing-gown belt
and promising when the music stops they'll be
provisionally reconciled with gravity.