Image: Frost on Fence Post – Idaho Farm
Original Song: “When Morning Looms” with Prose Commentary
If a poet/songwriter employs second person singular, s/he is often addressing not another person but her/himself. Songs are often less dense than poems with a few exceptions; I suggest this one is an exception.
Introduction and Text of “When Morning Looms”
The singing of birds in the morning may herald a day of remembering. Glorious angels surround the seat of contemplation where one who remembers plies her musings. The thought of water always seeking, seeking its own level will remind the pure brain of honesty, forthrightness, and delivery from evil.
Most songs remain dull outposts of themselves as they pander, exaggerate, and often obliterate inspiration in favor of calumny. Yet poems that are transformed into songs may hold a certain magic, if only for the singer/poet.
This song/poem testifies against the “Quacker” who would not only devalue but attempt to obliterate the sun that shines on the flock of lies that quackers often invent in order to elevate their stature. Perennially, Satan remains ready to command: some will always follow, while others never will.
When Morning Looms
“And all the time she didn’t pay the least attention to Quacker . . . ” —Old Granny Fox, Thornton W. Burgess
Chorus
There’s nothing clouds can shake
To break the jealous ties
The frost in on the fence post
The water is still wise
Verse 1
When morning looms
And the pepper is hot
The turtle will be bright
But the sturgeon will not
After butterflies spill free
And the yellow turns to gold
The quirky will stay young
The evil will grow old
Verse 2
Nothing to see here, Quacker
Nothing to hear at all
The moss grows on the wrong side
While the bitter reaps the fall
You’ve raked the scent of verses
And burned them in your nose
And dumped your figs on stories
That vindicate the rose
Verse 3
The wisdom of the ages
Prevails without a brain
But nuts and loons and titmice
Disturb the worn terrain
Nobody gives a damn about
A song sung by a saint
And plucky hens and misanthropes
Still spin their days drug-dazed
Verse 4
O hurry sun and come to all
Who wither in the rain
And spray your rays to badger them
Who lack a civil brain
When morning looms
And the pepper turns to dawn
The turtle will sing on
But the sturgeon will be gone
To listen to the song, please visit “When Morning Looms” at SoundCloud.
Prose Commentary on “When Morning Looms”
The turtle swims in the wisdom of water. The sturgeon swims as a prisoner of water. The turtle loves the sturgeon but is not fooled by their differences. The sturgeon cannot even perceive the difference or what they mean.
The metaphorical, almost fable-like, engagement of literary devices renders this song somewhat more dense than most songs—perhaps even more dense than most postmodern poems.
Chorus: The Squelch of Ideas
There’s nothing clouds can shake
To break the jealous ties
The frost in on the fence post
The water is still wise
The chorus of the song “When Morning Looms” dramatizes the postmodern squelch of ideas that permeate both weather and the common truth that water, which does nothing other than seek its own level, is “wise.”
Frost on the fence post is, in fact, just another form of water. And how long does frost on the fence post last? Until the sun comes up! Unfortunately, the frost may appear again and again until late into springtime—depending upon the spot on the globe.
Verse 1: A New Beginning
When morning looms
And the pepper is hot
The turtle will be bright
But the sturgeon will not
After butterflies spill free
And the yellow turns to gold
The quirky will stay young
The evil will grow old
Every morning offers a new beginning for the children of planet Earth. The sun rises on the innocent and the guilty alike. The singer of this plaintiff song metaphorically compares her essence to that of a “turtle.” Also metaphorically, an oppositional “sturgeon” occupies its own level of being.
The turtle rests nearer the heavens on the ladder of evolution than the sturgeon—not only poetically but scientifically. The turtle treads the land, while the sturgeon still breathes through gills—swimming is its only way of locomotion.
A turtle might swim as it chooses, but it also walks on the ground. Naturally, the “turtle will be bright,” and the “sturgeon will not.” The sturgeon will remain water-bound. No matter how bright the sturgeon might think itself, the fact is that it will remain the prisoner of gills.
Not content to concentrate on stations of life as victim/opposer/prisoner in her worldview to turtle/sturgeon, the singer metaphorically sings in “butterflies.” Butterflies after resting gestationally in the cocoon stage eventually “spill free.”
The color “yellow”—which in some venues equals cowardice—turns to “gold,” as the singer notes she has witnessed that “quirky” folks seem to remain youthful, while “the evil” or those who slander and smear others lose their youthful spirit.
Verse 2: The Vacuousness of Blather, Bilge, and Poppycock
Nothing to see here, Quacker
Nothing to hear at all
The moss grows on the wrong side
While the bitter reaps the fall
You’ve raked the scent of verses
And burned them in your nose
And dumped your figs on stories
That vindicate the rose
The speaker then accepts the fact that what she has to sing will have no influence on those who will never understand her “quirky” nature. She now metaphorically names the opposer “Quacker” because for her, all the blathering, bilge, and poppycock she has heard from that quarter is nothing but quacking.
The singer/speaker knows and accepts the fact that nothing she can ever say or do will change the position of the sturgeonesque quacking quacker who would always continue to slander and smear, if she would but allow it. According to the thinking of the singer, the opposer’s bitterness will lead to a reaping of the fall. The opposer’s moss “grows on the wrong side.”
The opposer has deliberately and maliciously slandered and smeared the better angels of the world. The singer/poet muses, creates, sings, and rises above the skank-smoke of earthbound quackery.
Verse 3: Eternal Passing by the Ethereal
The wisdom of the ages
Prevails without a brain
But nuts and loons and titmice
Disturb the worn terrain
Nobody gives a damn about
A song sung by a saint
And plucky hens and misanthropes
Still spend their days drug-dazed
The opposer gives no time to seeking the ethereal or the eternal. The singer knows that “the wisdom of the ages” continues despite the pop off platitudes of satan worshipers. But she also sees that gutter snipes can disturb the landscape and mental environment, even of the wider, natural culture. It still remains common knowledge that saints hold little sway over the hide-bound.
Even in the halls of learning and high culture of postmodern society, saints remain passé. And all common, societal drugs spread their mischief over a large percentage of the population. Opposer and opposition unite in the spawn of the death cult.
Verse 4: The Civil Brain of Self-Sufficiency
O hurry sun and come to all
Who wither in the rain
And spray your rays to badger them
Who lack a civil brain
When morning looms
And the pepper turns to dawn
The turtle will sing on
But the sturgeon will be gone
The singer then calls on the sun to come to those who have been withering in the life-giving rain. She asks for the giant orb to spray its rays—not necessarily to heal them but to “badger them”—the singer knows that the opposer suffers the indignity of buying into the postmodern, vaccinated pharmaceutical blather. The sun is bad for you—voila! skin cancer!
Just a “civil brain” would be sufficient to understand that far from causing disease, the sun is a healing force for all earthly inhabitant—avoid extreme sunburns but take the free vitamin D in moderate doses, like everything else.
The singer then reprises the first line—mentioning pepper, which was merely “hot” in the opening, but now is turning “to dawn.” Pepper is an enlivening spice; pepper brings food to life, gives it an enchanting flavor. You cannot spell pepper without pep. For this singer, pepper is important, heralding the original notion of the dissension between “turtle” and “sturgeon.”
The turtle/singer moves forward on intuition—swimming in the blessèd, bright realization of soul power that overcomes all darkness in the wise water. The sturgeon will likely lose itself in the muck and muddle that works diligently to keep all sturgeons exactly where they are for the foreseeable slew of incarnations.
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