Drum poems

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I. Pocket Drumming
Sometimes drummers
ought not move.
Of course their limbs
angle and arc, swish
through small space,
create booms beneath
the asphalt roof,
an oak tree, the moon.
But the beat. The beat.
If the beat stays in
one place everybody
else gets a free ride.
This is the secret
to making the rest
of the band sound
better: a generous
act from within
the racket.
II. Free Drumming 
I want to lose time
for awhile,
shake it the way
a dog shakes
after water.
Instead I fall
deeper into it
as the setting sun
recedes behind an
imagined mountain,
pulling the leftover
daylight down
into itself.
My limbs are run
by a metronome
directing me through
habitual patterns
of motion. I have
played nothing
new in years.
III. No drumming
Can't the drummer
stop, leave space
for the thoughtful
discourse of a violin,
a piano promising
rain, acoustic guitar,
a candle flame?
The drumming we
want is no drumming.
Nothing at all.
Not silence but not
thunder, a moving
train, or the trash
truck dropping an
emptied dumpster
to the pavement.
Alas, spring birdsong
is accompanied
by a helicopter
overhead.