Listening To Townes Van Zandt

By Christine Gosnay

We are of one mind
and too much has not been said
about all the quiet afternoons
childhood offered us,
lit gray like a cat, or blue,
and cursed with an early moon.
When father wore an apron
or crept like a bear, we screamed.
Nothing is so gone.
Where is his record player
or the channel that forked
a distant year toward us,
kind, slow magnet?
There was a song we shared
without your listening,
you widowed soul crawling away on your elbows.
I sing it to my child, with a full hand I
flick its rapeseeds everywhere,
clear, and slow,
with all the sincerity its author indeed felt
in his ten-gallon hat
and his thin, whisky-soaked shirt.

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