Dad listened to his records with his whole body,
lay on his back on the living room floor, knees bent,
fingertips perched on his ribs.
I felt irritated
when I stepped around him,
annoyed, as he got swept away.
But when the babysitter arrived,
I made her thumb through boxes
of Dad’s records
to find the one with the man atop a train
on the cover, Johnny Cash, 1965,
Orange Blossom Special.
It had seeped within me too,
that piercing harmonica, the cadences, rhythms,
the warm timbre of a deep, male voice.
The Man in Black
