DRUMS IN THE NIGHT

There might have been

A few ashes in a dish

In a room filled with light

From another hot dry day

Miles and miles away

And the sound of a long dress

Brushing a highly polished floor

The distant echo of a horse’s hooves

Or the scream of a car’s tires

But the painter left no trace

Of that other story

Only an old wall of adobe or brick

Where time has eaten away

Bits of carefully layered paint,

A barred window revealing no interior

Only a darkness framed with stone

Stained in an upper corner,

Blackened, as if from fire

The only link to the room

With the dish of ashes

Is the shadow to one side of the window

Which might be a deadened vine

A growth of fungus

Or a fire’s ashes trapped

Against the weathered stone wall:

A shadow shaped like Africa

No, there is a clue

Though what it tells

Is left to the viewer

The painter named his work

“Drums in the Night”