Elegy for Robert Johnson
Outside Greenwood, MS
Found your tombstone
(several sites claim you)
beside a Zion country church
under a giant pecan tree
and placed three pecans
on the top as an offering
to thank you for bringing me
into the kitchen of poetry
with your taut lyrics
those forty years ago
when I first heard you
sing about the blues
falling like hail
all around you with
a hellhound on your trail.
Robert, every crossroads
in these Delta parts got
your name written on it
and every train station
got a red and blue light
glowing in the dark
as your lover leaves you
behind to sing and keen
the blues for all eternity.
Every house hereabouts
got a broom you gonna
dust in the morning before
you leave to ramble
to one more juke joint where
poison settles in the whiskey.
But in this quiet corner
of a country graveyard
where your spirit expands
I spend some moments
listening to your bottleneck
blowing through the boughs
and your high lonesome voice
singing poems of pain
that last for all time
as a small blues station
sends out the voices of your
blues brothers and sisters
singing your mighty words
that live beneath every blues
written since you been gone.
**
On the Porch of the Blue Front Café,
Bentonia, Mississippi
We’re sittin’ on the porch of the Blue Front Café,
two brothers and a bluesman at his Blue Front Café
watchin’ the evening sun sink and fade away.
Jimmy “Duck” Holmes goes to get his Epiphone,
comes back huggin’ his sweet baby Epiphone
to show us its warm and deep old-time tone.
Patting the ticker beating behind his beer
Jimmy tells us he sings from “here.”
He pulls from the sky a song low and near.
Two brothers and a bluesman watchin’ the sun,
two brothers and a bluesman followin’ the sun
go down into a song sung by a native son.
We feel the sun go down in a new song
with a poem to climb out of it before long.
A Bentonia bluesman “skies” a poet a song.
**
Spinning on Main Street, Ferdinand, Indiana
I’m spinning, Miss Ida,
I’m spinning out of my orbit
in the direction of yours.
Ever since I walked into Doc
Wollenmann’s historic Swiss Chalet
I’ve been thinking about you.
I’m hoping you will spin
back in my direction.
Ida, they were going to
tear down the gingerbread
house Doc Wollenmann built
for his family, but now they
are coming together to
keep it alive in the present.
I feel your presence everywhere
inside and outside this house,
Ida Hagan, descendant of slaves,
great-granddaughter of Emanuel
Pinkston, free founder of
The Freedom Community
in the hills not far away.
To keep Doc Wollenman’s
chalet standing on Main Street
is to keep our memory of you alive.
Blink your eyes, Miss Ida.
Give me some kind of sign.
I’m ready to sing your song.
**
Blues for Ida Hagan
Miss Ida, Miss Ida, you are near.
You’re sitting with me right here.
I’m trying to make some things clear.
We are sitting on Doc Wollenmann’s porch.
Two spirits sitting on a Swiss Chalet porch.
Different times, different races trying to touch.
We both live inside our skin.
Different hues color our skin
but spirits touch deepest within.
I got a guitar I’m holding tight.
I’m trying my best to play it right,
to find blue notes, not just white.
Miss Ida, I want you to sing for me.
My guitar is tuned in open D.
I play to help you sing to me.
This boy knows you got the right voice.
You got all the right sounds in your voice.
Voice we inherit ain’t a matter of choice.
Miss Ida, we come from almost the same place,
even though we are not of the same race.
Sing me, sing me some Amazing Grace.
Some things best learned from a song.
Deepest stuff comes across in our song.
Ida, please sing me your sisterly song.
