Music hath charms to soothe the exhausted beast,
but consolation in sound?… The warmth of a breast
against your ear, your hair casually mussed

by the hand that strokes it smooth… that is where
what consolation there is, is… although the pure
and lucid flow of song like prisms of water

thaw-thrown down the river in early spring,
can give, not warmth, but a hint of lessening
cold, imprisonment broken, a loosening…

the eternity of joy is brief, is gone
downriver; still there comes the consolation
that loss left something here, some fumbled coin.

© 2017, JB Mulligan