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.