Race Music
July 11 2010


All they play are the blues
on this old transistor,
brittle plastic, tinny
vintage 1963.
Elvis, in Memphis
B. B. King.
Delta heat, the contagious beat
R&B meets jazz —
happiness
conjured out of faith, and sadness.
It was race music, back then,
negro stations.
The air waves
segregated too.

So here I am, in a rustic cabin
far removed.
Yet somehow, the battery’s still juiced,
my old transistor
still pulling-in tunes.
Could it be campus radio
in the dead of night,
a lonely student of blues?
Or some rogue signal,
bouncing off the ionosphere
for 50 years,
only old transistors can hear?

Bad cards, cheatin’ women,
somethin’ fine
cookin’ in the bedroom for him,
make even bad times bearable.
Maybe it’s the shared misery
the same old thing.
Or the syncopated beat
that makes you move your feet,
when you can’t even get out of bed.

I hold the cheap little speaker right next to my ear,
and I’m 10 years old again.