Collaboration

I woke this morning in the dark with a face
in mind: a senior citizen wanted to reach out
and, I suspect, apologize for a wrong done
some sixty-five years ago. Sorry, no thanks.
I too have been tempted to reach out, even
atone. “Let sleeping dogs lie, let the dead
bury …” I think there’s an animal buried

in my back yard. There’s grass and then
an area, a sandy rise, like a pitcher’s mound,
and, here and there, patches of black plastic,
like those thick trash bags, little triangles of
black plastic sticking up.  Part of me wants
to start digging, but I might have to call
the city health department or animal control.
What if it’s a person, a human corpse?

I doubt that. I woke with that boyish face
and a thought of buried things. Some people
have gardens. My friend Bob’s sister scattered
his ashes in her garden. Some people have
watch collections, others coin collections.
My DVD collection I got rid of. I replaced it
with, I’m proud to say, being somewhat tech-
challenged, digital movies! This morning

I thought Ray, I should go to Amazon for Ray.
The click of a button. Taylor Hackford’s film
starring Jamie Fox as the great Ray Charles.
In one scene Ray’s sitting at the piano and
the guy who plays the great Ahmet Ertegun
comes up to him. “Hey, Ray, I got this song …”
Ahmet sits at the piano, in a little whiny voice
sings “You can talk about the pit, barbecue.”

Suddenly Ray’s banging away at the piano,
singing, screeching, shouting, the camera’s
whirling, the moviegoers in the theater, ones
not dead from the neck down, at the edge
of musical greatness, are out of their chairs
at “Now this band’s going to play from nine
to one.” The camera’s whirling, “the house
is rocking.” Jamie Fox nails “Mess Around.”

When The Buffalo Springfield sang, “Hello,
Mr. Soul, I stopped by to think up a reason”
they were singing about the great Ahmet
Ertegun, the son of a Turkish ambassador.
I love that part in Ray, where, at the piano
he kind of mumbles, then Ray takes it, letting
us know it’s great to be alive, not ignoring
the buried things. Keep them in perspective.