The Wake

I check my mail: storied blues, jazz & pop singer Maria Muldaur Tonight. And I Picture
her face and I wish today was Friday, not Monday. Monday is when rock
and roll swallowed my mother’s
guarantee—quoting lyrics to a scrabble
board of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Blues he remembers,
began with not Guthrie and not Johnson, but his Devil—dancing on his pedestal

fiddling as I burn, plucking strings crafted from my gut
at the crossroads.
I remember it, the deal
I made in the sepia south, what his
pigmented pale hand
took from mine—the memory

at that corner, when I heard his mandolin player howl
her freckled name,
but the strings bent tune, melting in with grazed strokes
of the Devil’s quill—signing
on my right wrist what will I had. Then her bald cypress hearse,
pulled by two white

men on two white horses wagon’d away
with it. The Devil and I stood stalemated
steady in our stares—his harelip mouth
moistened his dust dampened lips. His accompanying string band’s fingers wept
blood, wept
drawls in pictures captured in the Devil’s blue

butane watch. The warm resonance reverberated cold in his red
sky—sweat and tears danced together
above my cheek. Two rocks and a chess board
were at my crossroads
when my rook fell first to his king.
I made the next

move to keep my queen.
His band, now surfaced a drowning
piano sounding my anxiety,
pressing-pushing each note up to my ear—the Devil wanted me to know his name,
but I spelled in reply my queen;
speaking without tune to his sound.

I made my move
next to his rock—the band strikes a snap in their notes, their strings bitten
through and the piano slammed shut. The Devil picks
for you, I remember,
someone
in song that is spoken in blank verse.

Maria Muldar plays tonight and I picture
your face and I wish
today was everyday—I sat on the rock
across from the devil, listening
in your sound.