THAT SOUND

(For Little Richard)

 

You liked to make a noise

Banging pots and pans

To accompany

Your boyhood singing

 

And always raising the key

Until they threw you

Out of the church choir

For making ’that sound’.

 

Later it made you great

A wop bap a loop bop

Tutti Frutti

Good Golly Miss Molly!

 

In and out of religion

And of confusing sexuality

But ‘that sound’

Never changed.

 

The sound of a rock n roll legend

There was no one

Who could fill a dance floor

Like Little Richard.

 

Regardless of bad times

Or depressing news

You only had to

Make ‘that sound’.

 

May 'that sound'

Always be with us

Throughout both happy

And uncertain times.

 

David Subacchi

May 2020