Yo, heave ho!
Dad cranks up the gramophone
like a conductor lifts his baton.
He gently drops the stylus
onto the shellac 78rpm.
Bass voices of Volga burlaks
arise from the disc,
from a deep echo
in a vault or mountain pass.
Their sacred shanty melody
transforms
our dwelling place
into a cathedral.
I’m silenced by its power,
this strange, hypnotic wall of sound,
powering the heaving of barges on straps,
not by horses, and before steamships,
a choir of metronomes,
of full fathoms,
ticking pendulums.
Yo, heave ho!
Maggie Mackay’s poem ‘How to Distil a Guid Scotch Malt’ is in the Poetry Archive’s WordView permanent collection. Her second collection The Babel of Human Travel (Impspired.com ) was published in 2022. She reviews poetry collections at The Friday Poem (https://thefridaypoem.com). Her best downtime moments are spent with her greyhound and a malt whisky. Twitter handle is @Bonniedreamer.
Amethyst Review 