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Just
Music
We sang the songs of childhood
Hymns of faith that made
us strong
—“Will the Circle Be Unbroken”
There was music there: Indian head woodpeckers
drilling hickory bark, crows
and chicken hawks
cawing above the field in front of the parish dumps
where International Paper clear-cut slash pine— music
from D in the shed in the yard strumming “Brown Eyed
Girl”
with a Mexican Stratocaster, him groping its neck
for
the next right chord and on to “Born on the Bayou”—
music in the timing of our feet snapping limbs and
leaves
on our way through the river birch and cottonwood
to the dry creek bed, in the whacks of our machetes
into water vines hanging from red oak—music in
yardwork,
my aunt whistling “Give Me That Old-Time
Religion”
while she gathered leaves to burn, the whoosh of my
hands
scarring 16th notes into red cedar with
sandpaper,
my father thudding his nail gun on the downbeats
like a kick drum, one grandfather on his hands
and knees picking lima beans singing “There Will Be
Peace in the Valley” another grandfather hunkered down
over
summer squash singing “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down”—
music in the clacking top of the coffee maker dancing
above the steam’s pressure, in the timbre of a voice
when it called out to a visitor,
Get you a cup; sit
a spell—
in the trembling from a Hammond B-3 when we lost
another of the old folk—the congregation singing
about
a circle unbroken in the sky, Lord, in the sky
that I don’t know much beyond. There’s something
unbroken in my mouth, in the way I ask Mama
if she wants another cup of coffee, how I sing
the hymns from the clapboard churches and fields
without having to believe in anything beyond this
throat,
this air that stops for a moment in these lungs then
moves out
away from me on and on in the sky, Lord, in the sky.
In the Pasture Between
What Was
Your Grandparents' House and Aunt's House
After They Have All Moved On
There’s that 1980s satellite dish the
size
of a futon sitting in the field and pointing
to
what, surely, was once a signal behind
the bluebird
jacket of
sky.
Twenty yards away,
those concrete steps lead to a front door of a trailer
that’s gone. Scale
them
now. Stand on that top step to nowhere.
A horse will nicker for peppermints and apples,
will rub his blazed snout
against your two hands
that will grope for something to hold.
Spending
the Summer Back in Louisiana
With all my Stuff Still in Washington
Heat waves vibrate out the throats of
sugar cane.
From Baton Rouge to New Orleans,
Clifton Chenier sings about coming
home
to his mother. His voice an accordion
prowl from the speakers and out
the open truck windows.
July melts tar from the road, boils
what’s left
of yesterday’s storm brimming in
potholes.
Louisiana was never meant to be
driven.
Four of the five longest bridges in
America
sweat above the state’s lakes and
swamps.
We drive the Twin Span Bridge over
the
Pontchartrain from New Orleans back to Addis.
Silver water washes the eggshell sky.
The old bridge beside us is a ruined
fossil
that kneels on knees that Katrina
buckled years ago.
In the evening,
Tab and Willie sing “Rainy Day
Blues”
as
another shower wets the cane. Fires somersault
Douglas fir in Washington while
waterlogged moss
leans these limbs in closer, and I
can touch so little that I own,
that I need hardly anything other
than all this water.
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