Kitchen Table, or When Mildred Bailey Sings:
Gramophones were weapons, swallowing
the dying songs—
voices
are still muted
in the dust bowl
of those English libraries.
But her voice is clear
as the Chattahoochee,
wide and glittering,
breaching the shadows of the Blue Angel.
Oh, winged music,
red-tongued
notes on 55th where
red boys in strange cities once stopped dead
and dreamed of Georgia
again: instruments of their fathers,
forefathers, and further.
Her angel voice
brings them home
to Cherokee,
the whooping crane.
She lets her sons fumble back,
led by soft sonata
and the bird tracks.
