The Drums at Coolidge Park

The downtown park—the one next to the river,
The once abandoned shipping yard—has metal drums.
Discarded drums from some dump truck or tractor trailer,
Brake drums tempered by heat and service and abuse
Turned percussion by an artist, arrayed in two tiers.
Find a twig (if you can)
Or use the heel of a shoe and tap-ting-tong a song;
They, too, sing America,
Like this park, this city, the people here.
Today, a complicated polyrhythmic beat
Performed by an octopus of adolescents;
Later, a simple phrase of Bach
Worked out incrementally by my dad
While my children played welding bells cut from gas cylinders.
The phoenix’s blaze and birth have nothing on these
Reticent triumphs of endurance and transformation
And value.