The Barge Poet
Masi was working on her memory whilst tucked into her little coffin of a bed, the cannel rose above her and her current group would float down stream. She was trying to remember the name of the boy had befriended for the last group, she pictured him, tall and gangly and in trouble for knocking things over board. Clumsy… Clarence. She would likely not see him for many years if at all, it was kept that way so they couldn’t form alliances.
She hummed a tune, a baby coon as it was known, her mother floated in her mind – gone down the long cannel stretches on another boat. They had forcibly separated them, her mother docked food for her effort to cling. It hurt still to remember those arms around her but the memory had to be preserved.
No affiliations allowed.
This skipper though, this one had something she remembered from a boat team when she was small, the songs, fresh and alive and some new – telling of daring do and of love and hope and the spirit of the people. The Poem of the Heart Speak. They all sang songs and told stories but some people were better at it than others, some were the Poets and he was one of them. Masi fell asleep think of him and composing a baby coon to remember her mother by.
The morning was all misty chill, she pulled clothing on over her woollen bed cloths, they made her skin itch but she had out grown all the cloths her mother had found for her, they were synthetic the Skipper had told her and then performed a ballad about nylon and fleece that was not fleece and rainproof light weight macs. She had asked him about these and he smiled sadly, ‘one day maybe you will see such fabric.’ And then he lite his pipe that glowed of nothing and emitted a puff of water vapour and he retreated into himself.
Now however she was going to cheer him up with her poem, ‘you have a poem?’ He asked surprised.
She nodded shyly and he smiled big and wide at her, ‘then tonight we shall all hear it!’ And it was done like that, she was to perform her poem. She ran through and through and through it again and again as if she could forget such a thing.
Skipper told her he once had a way to share thoughts out of the head, to remember them externally and she had smiled at him, ‘my mum called it scratches on paper.’ And he had patted her on the head. She didn’t say she didn’t know what paper was.
She pre-occupied herself with moving the bags about the deck and checking that no rodents had gotten on board and were preparing to feast upon the corgo. She caught two deftly, skinned and gutted them for the cooking pot, oh they never starved on the provisions they were allowed but… they were never full either and you never knew when you’d end up in a bad group.
Skipper said that poems were to help people remember they were people, her mother said the same, bad groups were the ones were they did not light the fires and did not sing. They were becoming less but they still cropped up. The Poets were important and tonight she would be amongst them.
It was late as they docked and tied the barge to the bank, many others were there and a fire had already been laid, the sounds of song drifted through the night air. Sometimes you went weeks without seeing another barge, Masi wondered if she would still get to sing her poem.
Skipper barked orders and ordered her off the boat, he then gently took her hand into his callosed and hard one, it completely engulfed her’s and she began to be afraid.
They walked to the fire, so many people sitting around it! The last notes of the song sung hung on the air but before the next one could break into the crowd consciousness Skipper was there holding up her arm. ‘I brings a poet fresh and new, listen to the words that she choose and decide weather she shall be a bard like you or minstral like me.’
She felt their eyes blazing in on her as if they were melting her with expectant fire. Then a thought occured to her – she would never know but her mother could be out there or someone could remember it and pass it on. She pulled her shoulders back and looked up into the night sky obscured by mist and smoke and began.’
‘I made this for my mother from the things she bayed me learn.’ And though she was shaking the words poured from her lips and spoke of the longing she did not understand but had been so strong within the only person she had known from more than 6 months.
‘We learns the songs
Remembers them
To make us human again
To feel the soul
Of us all
Compute
Mind and deed
Once they say you could read
Trap the words
But spread the seeds
Thoughts within, thought without
Thoughts shared
What was the war about?
But now we trust
To our Poems
Until we are free
We shall sing
Songs and prose
Rhymes of how it goes
We remembers us
We remembers them
We remembers that we will be again.
No one clapped, she stood frozen in their silence, was it not good enough?
A cough and someone was rising from a log perch of a seat, ‘I think,’ came the gruff voice, ‘that we have a bard a new coon for the babs, I want it taught to every mother, girl sing it again.’
She ment to ask why and was it good enough but she didn’t she just recited it again and again until they all remembered it. And she herself vowed to learn tunes to teach others how to be human.
Posted: Thursday, December 29th, 2011 @ 10:26 am
Categories: Flash Fiction, The Punks World.
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