*

*

Anywhere I go, the songs follow me.

The man was a giant to my five-year-old eyes.

Tall and skinny, with a long-neck banjo

he threw his head back and sang,

hopped like a cricket around the stage.

*

Camp songs carried his imprint.

We told Aunt Rhody

her goose was dead. The Midnight

special kept shining its light.

While he was blacklisted,

his songs rang like the hammer.

*

And then it was all about

overcoming, and equality

and bringing ‘em home

from Vietnam. We were

singing. I taught his songs

to the next generation.

*

How we all came together

on the river, once sewer water,

then a swimming pool.

The songs sailed up and down

the Hudson, sailing on into

choruses while he swapped songs

by the Sloop Club’s wood stove.

*

Handing down clothes to his

granddaughter, visits to

the log cabin above the river,

cowering under Toshi’s gimlet eye

her sharp words, no nonsense

for her who managed it all.

*

The song of a man threaded music

in silver strands through my living days,

the score of a life of giving

a shining pattern of humility and power.