Using form: Experimenting: Ann Drysdale, ‘When Mister Nifty Plays the Bones’
With things like tongs in the palm of his hand
Tongue-depressors or langues-de-chat
He tappets the rhythm of his one-man-band
As he struts in the gutter with a tra-la-la.
He twinkles his fingers and he flicks his wrist
Hey-diddle-diddle and fiddle-de-dee
And his two tame twiddlesticks jump and twist
With a click-click-clackety, one-two-three
For Nifty’s bones are made of wood
And they click like sticks with a restless chatter
His brass as he passes is loud and good
But his rattling bones are a different matter
His drum tum-tums and his trombone groans
And his hi-hat cymbal softly sighs
But all I can hear is the homely bones
That sing out the song in his small sad eyes
He dances a foxtrot, quick-quick-slow
And the hi-hat hisses with a whispered yes
But the bones, bones, bones with their no-no-no
Tick-tock to the tune of uselessness
When Mister Nifty dances by
His fingers flicker and his brass bells shine
But a part of my heart feels cold and dry
As his lonely bones call out to mine.
*****
Ann Drysdale writes “I made this poem because I wanted to see if I could turn words into music, with assonance and dissonance, chiming and clashing like the components of Mr. Nifty’s one man marching band. Laying aside conventional metre and putting boom, boom, boom alongside tum titty tum titty tum. I wanted it to sing and to dance to itself, and for the reader to dance along with it.”
The poem was collected in Miss Jekyll’s Gardening Boots, Shoestring Press, 2015.
Ann Drysdale still lives in South Wales. She has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. She has written all her life; stories, essays, memoir, and a newspaper column that spanned twenty years of an eventful life. Her eighth volume of poetry – Feeling Unusual – came together during the strange times of Coronavirus and celebrates, among other things, the companionship of a wise cat and an imaginary horse.
Illustration – supplied by Ann Drysdale
