Listening to Townes Van Zandt

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.