We’re listening to a rotation of songs, me, my son,
friends of his, we’re all standing in the kitchen talking
as I cook. The sound of an unmistakable voice floats
from the speakers into the room, sings just beneath
the note, as if the song is a corpse waiting to be discovered
beneath the water’s surface, until the note quavers impossibly
into life within your ear, tin turns to gossamer wonder
and you realize you were mistaken, that is a magnolia flower
you saw floating on the river, a most beautiful Southern flower.

Listen, you can hear beneath that dark water, beauty and old sorrow
cry so plaintively it makes a fragile moment inexpressible.
 “Cost me a lot, but one thing I got, that’s my man.”
I turn to the boys and say, “Quiet, that’s Billie Holiday.”
They stop, listen for a moment as the speakers launch a voice,
instruments, identified by the crackle and hiss of ancient
technology as long ago and once upon a time. They stop
for a moment, it’s painful to witness, they struggle but the music’s
not fast enough, not loud enough to stop them. They’re not
to blame, young, seemingly immune to the passion of suffering,
maybe another time when they are prepared to listen.
I turn to the stereo speaker, and say to no one present,
only the invisible past, singing forever to the future,
“Forgive me, Lady,” and hit fast forward.