The Song That Finished Decades Ago

They have been playing so long
that no one remembers who wound them,
who first oiled the small gold gears
where a heart should have been arguing.

The tuba player breathes brass instead of breath,
a long red horn where his lungs
used to hold something warmer than air.
He aims it at the empty room
like a man still trying to reach someone
who left before the second verse?

The drummer keeps time for a song that finished decades ago,
his sticks are falling on skin stretched tight
over an eagle that never learned to land,
only to hover, forever, mid-flight,
stitched into leather, going nowhere.

And the giant with the horned and gleaming skull
cradles his red guitar like a grief
he's grown too large to set down,
each rivet in his armor is a year
he wasn't there for something,
each dented plate is a door
he closed too hard, once, on someone soft.

The one in the green coat and the tall black hat
leans into the cello's low wooden ache,
his glass eyes glowing faint as memory,
his gloved hand finding the same four strings
that used to accompany a woman
whose name has rusted shut inside him.

Somewhere behind them, unplugged,
a pedal marked Steampunk Soul still hums,
patient, mistaken, believing it is still being played.

They will keep performing for the dust, for the brass, for each other,
until the last spring loosens,
still convinced, in their small tin way,
that someone, somewhere, is listening.