(for dana rushin)

Well, you’ve got have that moon-June thing;
Hard-coded into our DNA, after all,
But if you stop there and say Well, here it is,
You’re just playin’ chopsticks instead of concertos,
Or parsing out Monk on a Fisher-Price piano.
Story’s gotta live and breathe, see,
Just like you and me, got to have a heartbeat,
And if the tale’s told right, done truly,
Well, it’s a light goin’ on for everybody,
Be it little girls (getting the giggles
Or bein’ all mock-stern with you,
Finding a way to work it in some double-dutch rhyme)
Or old-timers, gray-haired and coke-bottle glasses,
Some of them all but blind, leaning on their canes
(But lightly, gracefully, like old soft-shoe men)
And one of them likely to chuckle softly,
And say Yessir, that’s how it is.
You tell it now, son—story’s big as a house,
Big as the whole **** universe.