I pick up
Turn over
Dust off
An old trusted record
preparing to be respun
No different than any of my other since
set aside disks
Of fading voices
Of milestones gone by
To be returned to
These old records
of them there are many
I take each in different times
with different hands
and whittle and carve them like tree rings
into stiff plastic concentricity
Forever etchings to be catalogued
and filed neatly to my mind’s ages
Some disks spin 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
slotted carefully with gloved fingers
into crisp paper sleeves
So when the ledger lines I currently fill
jetting as I am out on my own
with great whorls of ink and long-stemmed notes
fracture
and a jarring silence fills the air
and wells my eyes
with a mistiness for the sounds of home
I find a nice solace
stockpiling records
in my dark recesses
For life in the present
is great
is wonderful
But I find it does well
to not muffle my ears
to the past
To allow
overtones of family dinner table buzz
and the cry-laughing of sleepless sleepovers
snare cracks of bats and balls
and cleats crunching sun-baked dirt
bass thumps of worn tennis shoes
thudding along tree-lined sidewalks
chords stacked thickly with coarse beach sand
turned to squeaky linoleum floors turned to
thrums of passion and first girlfriends and breakups
and navigating the trials of growing up
To echo through once more
Soundtracks trumpeting
the most rhythmic march
of time
For that perched needle must only drop
tickling beloved grooves like ivory
to flower such
sweet music
toes tapping
heart swelling
to my forever disks
blissfully respun
Jake Marble 