By JEFF McRAE
We scraped the Mississippi
mud off our old piano and father
blew his solos out the open window
and over the meadow
and mother made me strut
with her double-stops, drum sticks
in hand, the old rhythms
of everything I hadn’t learned
but was sure I heard bouncing
off the mountains in my head.
Fleas marched across
the saint-filled rug. It wasn’t
sorrowful to travel somewhere
new, that’s what the music said.
I was moved—some nights
unsure where here was.
Beale Street? Indiana? I lived
five miles outside town,
cow piss in my boot.
My splash cymbal ached to punch
the end of every tune.
We shook hands and I shivered
with joy—it was real,
living, our family band.
Jeff McRae‘s poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Antioch Review, Salamander, Cloudbank, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and many other publications. He has poems forthcoming in I-70 Review, Rattle, Permafrost Magazine, and elsewhere. He lives in Vermont.
