record needle wobbles
catches    follows
the tune of the groove
etched with static blues
and trumpet flares

I follow the needle
back to the year of
my grandmother’s birth
to that Harlem brothel
where Lady Day
first heard Louis

two decades
laced with strings
and smoky croon
before Pops became
her sweet hunk o’ trash–
fragile might
in the turning of two voices

and when her voice
finally drowned in the drink
the swindling and the drugs
left her bank account
boasting of a mere
seventy cents

which is little less
than this record cost–
second   third   maybe tenth-hand
overly-heard and
love-scratched

crazy they may call me
but I just can’t spend
my mornings alone