Note (1/8/20): This was written throughout the first months of 2019. I’ll let the rest speak for itself.
Picking up
Turning over
Dusting off
What one does with any trusted
record
Preparing to be respun
Is equally critical for all other since
set aside disks
Of memory fading
Of life gone by
To be returned to
My old records
Of them there are many
Time and importance and emotion
Scratched and carved like tree rings
Into plastic concentricity
Forever etchings to be catalogued
Filed neatly to the ages
Some disks of mine act as but mini 45s
Numbering few
And taking little prominence in the collection
Yet there all the same
While others crowd my shelves
Voluminous sets
Encased with utmost care in
crisp paper sleeves
I take from here
For a moment…
I spin a track
With a sputter and jerk the needle
teethes in
and begins to sing
The air fills
warps
shivers
And suddenly
A boy wakes
Hot breath
Pumping heart
Pumping legs
Heart
Legs
Breath
Heart
Legs
Breath
A battalion of bikes
Keeps a watchful eye over a
raging war
Summer is a time of honor
and sweat
and sacrifice
Boys becoming men becoming
cleated eye-blacked warriors
At least until lunch hour’s
toll
Games melt into days
into seasons
into years
Yet bits of self and spirit will remain --
in dirt-stained clothing
in sharp bat cracks
in childhood freedom
On the bike-rimmed diamonds
My disk gives a gentle scratch
Needle slip-sliding
before catching once more
Melodies dissipating
then changing key..
Sun-baked dirt becomes squeaky linoleum
When balls and gloves hibernate in bedroom closets
And tree-lined streets
cloak themselves
in coy capes of reds and oranges
In this village
Of small town - big city values
and oft-progressive beliefs
Of unusually steep taxes
and oft-grumbling taxpayers
Of opportunity and well-being abounding
and oft-unrecognized privilege pervading
Blackboards
and blacktops
Paper milk cartons
and graphite-stained fingers
Are most valued currency
Of and for the youth
The boy awoken
He listens intently
To this tune well-sung
From big-arched building
to circular building
to campus of buildings
He’ll trace childhood through hallway
All that which it entails
Through brown bags devoured
in a glass-walled common space
A daily soundtrack of kids just
being
Single slice pizza boxes and Culver’s wrappers
Intent witnesses to this cherished
and missed
lunchtime spectacle
Through popped strings
and hand-me-down brass
Fractured notes
and wavery pitches
Steadily
discouraged faces are assured
Budding bow strokes and embouchures
will flourish
Note by note
Bar line by bar line
Year by year
Under the baton’s patience
and care
Morphing into symphonies
South Pacific overtures
Swells of heart’s nervous fluttering
and passion soundly cascading
Marches to play across
the greatest march of time
Soundtracked in mind
and heart
like my records
To be slid with a pat
onto the shelves
Far too rapidly
it seems
The track whips around
under my needle’s dainty touch
Blossoming new petals of sound
Now
In soft evening light
Casting early June’s warm embrace
On a grassy lawn nestled between flanks
of brick
and tree
and memory
Bright red gowns
rustle to
and fro
Tassels twined with gray
bobbing joyously
and perhaps nostalgically
too
Splices of life reel through these capped heads
Many have lugged backpacks each AM
to the kitchen table
away from mom’s parting hugs
along the slabs of sidewalk
past the crossing guards
All across and around
this little square neighborhood
Since the farthest grasps of remembrance…
teachers and time-outs and recesses and naptimes ignored
and rocky rococo friday’s and thursday folders and character
assemblies and activity night dances and basement hangouts
and concerts and music trips and first dates and first
break-ups and new stresses and thrills and successes and
failures and newfound freedoms and two-a-day practices
and competitions and rowdy bus rides and blasted heart rate
monitor hustles and copperdome debates and opening nights
and ma fischer’s runs and curtain closes and free period
freedoms and watershed wisdoms and front lawn lounges
and naptimes but dreamt of and colleges visited and
applications filled and acceptances taken and next steps
planned and goodbyes had and fortunes counted and tears
shed and the final waning hours of it all…
All come
All burnt to record
All held
As will soon be diploma
Upon final crossing of the auditorium stage
Forever
With a click and purr
my turntable hums to a stop
Once more I carefully
pick up
turn over
dust off
and re-sleeve
Ears ringing
Eyes and mind in another place
This place…
A series of lacks
May be seen in one
bitty square mile
Such a place
May not produce
double platinum albums
of world-changing proportion
However this matters
but little…
For this carefully sleeved record
Is my record
Is our record
Shorewood
We’ll call it
And that perched needle must only drop
Tickling beloved grooves like ivory
To conjure
Sweet music
Toes tapping
Heart swelling
To forever sounds of
Home
Jake Marble 