By J.J. Tindall
ELEGY FOR STUDS
Listen: voices embroider
the unwelcome November rain.
Wind: mind radio. Radio:
great friend of the solitary.
Listen: my favorite
spoken-word artist
has checked out.
“Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep–
He hath awakened from the dream of life–”
Actor, author, blues rider, freedom fighter.
Activist, archivist. Medium, not message.
Lyre of tongues, culling euphony
from cacophony.
The Gil Evans
of the American
folk chorus.
“Begin again and again the never-attainable praising;
remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall was
merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.”
“Working” was the paperback
I wore out, re-binding the spine
with greying Scotch tape.
“The Good War” was Homeric,
articulating the soul of a nation
forged in war.
“Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only
saints have listened, until the gigantic call lifted them
off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly,
kneeling and didn’t notice at all:
so complete was their listening . . . listen
to the voice of the wind
and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.”
He read your book, he listened
to your music. He drew you out.
Call it: Old School.
Red shirt, red socks? Red
flag! “Call me Red? I got
your Red right HERE, fella!
Great line about
his FBI file:
“Some funny stuff . . . ”
Listen: Mahalia Jackson,
Big Bill Broonzy, a bright
up-and-comer named
Barack Obama . . .
“His is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where’er that Power may move
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains in from beneath, and kindles it above.”
Wind: ancient wire,
maelstrom of desire.
Studs: the Illinois Zephyr.
“The unwelcome November rain
has perversely stolen the day’s
last hour
and pawned it with that ancient fence,
the night.”
This came to you
from Chicago.
–
J. J. Tindall is the Beachwood’s poet-in-residence. He can reached at jjtindall@yahoo.com. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.
Posted on November 14, 2008