Epistrophy

from Abide by Jack Adam York





The sleeve sighs from the jacket,

the record from the sleeve.

The needle takes its breath.



I know what's next --

the horns, the hymns

that spiral back to silence



after the room fills with the sound

of another room, the sound

of steel as it fills the groove.



Tonight it's Monk's Music, a record

that begins in evening

and then turns back to twilight.



It pleads, "Abide with Me,"

and then demurs, "Well,

You Needn't," as dark rewinds.


Halfway back to "Crepuscule,"

it stops to ask

for another hand, and I have to rise



to turn the record as the room

remembers the room it used to be.

I have to raise the needle



I couldn't touch, once

too delicate for my hand,

needle that had to wait



for my father's. He'd stand

some nights in silence,

smoke his only word, then reach



and take the arm. Or he'd stand

and take a breath --

sigh of the sleeve in the jacket --



cough the door and be gone.

Like those movies,

like those nighclub films



where Monk stands from the piano,

turns his quiet waltz,

then walks off the stand.



twenty, thirty minutes gone,

the sidemen keeping time

while he works the night shift



at the furnace, I have to wait

for morning or evening again

to hear the other side,



Monk has to stay

in his child-red wagon,

while the stars spin through the pines.



Now, I turn the music back,

turn it over, as light eases

back into the sky. Dad



wakes the blanket, the amp,

the smell of solder, smell

of oil instead of iron, twilight



instead of twilight. Then

the room is young again,

the smoke, the silence, the stars,



years away, until dusk

raises its hands from the keys.

Then the needle gasps,



and I stand. I reach,

his hand on mine,

and breathe again.





Courtesy of "Abide" by Jake Adam York, Crab Orchard Review & Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale ©2014

"Epistrophy" first appeared in the Journal "Subtropics"