“Shake ‘em on Down”

Gritty and sultry.

The raw, gritty blues

And the hot, sultry howls and whispers of it

Leave her feeling shaken and thoughtful,

Still,

But full of a beckoning thrill of excitement

For what would happen next—

And who could say?

The days are so prettily predictable

And extraordinarily ordered,

Every moment with its own little ritual

All things categorized into compartments

Cubicles and desks

Sealed off and ziplocked

Each to his own

Fastidiously hierarchical.

But with this,

Something is so deliciously obscure,

Mysterious,

Capricious and mutable,

Featherly frivolous

Like on a blithely blue

Sky breezy and rippling green

Early autumn day.

The raw, beckoningly voluptuous phrases of guitar

And muffled, ubiquitous percussion,

The soul-splitting rumble

Of bass and words

Sift through her and leave her unaccountably changed.

While listening to it, she is a traveler,

Wandering in a river’s path

Snaky and winding, turning back on itself

Again and again

And then continuing on

Far out of sight.

She’s really on her way,

No longer always

Seeming to stand so stunningly still.

Someday she will reach where she is going

So, so, achingly slowly.

That’s what the music tells her

To her bitter delight and sweet impatience.

“Hats off to Roy Harper” murmurs out to her

Like a lover

In those soulful warbling bursts,

Rapid crescendo and decrescendo

Of the fervently beloved acoustic guitar,

With the unbridled, unarmored, untamed passion

That only these faraway and jubilant demi-gods

Could ever truly express.

Dejected and wild or exultant and wild,

No matter what mood

Their refrains are always unfettered.

There is something that is so obviously out of reach in it,

Something that cannot be touched,

Not right now, but before long

Those deterrents and distractions

The sidetracks and heartaches

The delays and the pain

She believes she’ll shake ‘em on down

Yeah, babe

She’ll shake ‘em on down.