Poem for Record Players

For their relentlessness, their
clever launching of the needle’s
secrets skyward, their luring
the needle to the hiccupping
end, for the red record player
by the low beveled window
with hollyhocks outside and
Rusty in Orchestraville turning
and Markie drooling and reaching
his hand to stop the turning, then
drawing it back, remembering.
For Markie with his scratched brain,
his flinging seizures, who would
bump the needle and jump from
the part of “The Swan,” by Sasson,
to the talking oboe, Markie
dancing, the needle floating
hardily along its new groove.
And for the gray living-room player,
for my father’s Tchaikovsky
and Beethoven, my mother’s
Oklahoma and South Pacific. For
my silly nostalgia, all of it, even then.
My hopeless longing: the absence
necessary for harmony to enter,
the needle of disharmony to press
against it. “Oh What a Beautiful
Morning,” my father is singing,
and my mother is singing in fragile
harmony with the one phonograph
speaker, all poured directly into
the palpitating rooms of my heart.
This is it, Oh, no such bright
golden haze on the meadow, no such
corn high as an elephant’s eye.