This is National Poetry Month, so I wanted to share a poem. Even if you don't like poetry or think it's boring, read my poem.[Sorry about the double spacing; can't figure out how to fix that.]
Then, if you like it, read some more, like the terrific Mary Oliver.
Below, my poem [I hope writing about music isn't as useless as dancing about architecture...]
Soundtracks
I used to watch my uncles singing to themselves as they walked around the house,
old hymns like Were You There?
Were you there when they crucified my lord?
Took me years to realize these soft baritone voices provided comfort.
Mama and Daddy gone, memories fading, but the music still sounded in their heads.
I hear my dad’s lovely, solid baritone waving proudly as a flag, above the lake.
He never learned more than a few lines of any song, and he made up the rest.
When my uncle Lewis died
I was stricken with laryngitis so bad I could not talk or sing for more than ten days. Grief
is a funny thing.
I listened,
though, every time I got in the car,
I listened
to the searing guitar of Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Complex woven electric blues.
Lewis would’ve hated his music.
It didn’t matter.
Stevie Ray got me through that time.
I get songs or snippets of songs in my head and they soundtrack my life, even when there is no radio playing.
I saw a movie some years ago called Songcatcher, about the music passed down through generations in the mountain communities.
I had never heard any of those songs but I knew them all.
The first time I heard Cherokee drums, I found tears streaming down my face.
My body knows songs sometimes,
songs not in my conscious memory.
My granddaddy could play a country fiddle.
My grandmother McMillan’s family could sing in harmony.
Mamaw sang hymns at the piano.
Daddy sang go to sleepy little baby to me.
Those songs are inside me.
Here is how we get to the heart of anything:
We write songs.
I sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider to my son last night, even though his body is a man’s body now.
The Itsy Bitsy Spider is a caress of love, a melody of hope, because he goes up the spout again.
A tiny spider connects us.
I want him to sing it to his children, like it was sung to me, like they will sing it to their children.
Above, Dad holding me as an infant, plus Bruce.
Above, Michael in 2008.
Right, Lewis, me, and Dad, around 1989.
