And I think I'm going to do one or two more poems
and then do a little music because I also
play blues harmonica and I'm always trying to find a way
to integrate that.
And sometimes, it's a tenuous kind of integration
but you know, I get to play music for you guys anyway.
So I will do two more poems and then a little bit of music.
Sorry?
- One more.
- OK, my stopwatch said I've been going 10 minutes
but maybe our clocks are on different.
But then I was reading first.
OK, so one more and music, will that work?
OK.
So I'll close the poetry part with this poem called News.
Because no reporters came to my door
wanting to confirm my low opinion of the Bush
administration.
Because not even the Jehovah's Witnesses
who can usually be counted on to arrive each Saturday bearing
informative articles on Satan's Wiles and the hour of judgment
can be counted on this afternoon.
I have no one to tell that the load of laundry
I managed to carry to the washer has been transferred
successfully to the dryer.
I even was able to make myself coffee
and toss the cat's toy onto her carpeted platform
before returning to my bed.
These were little victories over a sullen God.
The one who hunkers down and rocks back and forth muttering
that there's no reason to go on lifting the stone of today,
only to watch it roll down into tomorrow.
And now I feel compelled to report
that when the clothes were dry and warm,
I got up and folded them and put them away.
Then I finally dressed late in the afternoon
and looked out the window and saw my neighbor,
an old Black man who lives alone and sits on his porch
most days in a ratty kitchen chair.
So I got my harmonica and played a bit of Sonny Terry
I've been working on.
And I don't know if he listened.
If it lit a match to the damp cigarette of his joy,
I can't say.
But maybe it did in some small and unrecorded way.