Kitchen Table, or When Mildred Bailey Sings:

Gramophones were weapons, swallowing

the dying songs—

voices

are still muted

in the dust bowl

of those English libraries.

But her voice is clear

as the Chattahoochee,

wide and glittering,

breaching the shadows of the Blue Angel.

Oh, winged music,

red-tongued

notes on 55th where

red boys in strange cities once stopped dead

and dreamed of Georgia

again: instruments of their fathers,

forefathers, and further.

Her angel voice

brings them home

to Cherokee,

the whooping crane.

She lets her sons fumble back,

led by soft sonata

and the bird tracks.