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      October 7, 2024My Daddy Was an Appalachian FolksongJennifer Hambrick

      a harmonica-breathing picker of tunes,
      wayfaring stranger, foot-stomping pilgrim
      of sorrow unseen in honeysuckle and wildwood
      flowers high on a mountain his daddy
       
      and his daddy and his and his knew by heart.
      Sunday mornings he sings off key and so loud
      the brethren in front look back over their shoulders
      and smile at us that smile of sweet charity.
       
      Quiet down, Mama sizzles, and he swallows
      the song deep into his belly till the organ stops
      playing and the choir stops singing and the afterglow
      of stars in our crowns lingers in the circle
       
      unbroken. And the stories those songs tell—
      the one about the carpenter’s wife who left him
      and her baby and ran off with a man who said
      he’d buy her more than biscuits and grease gravy.
       
      When the song ends, she’s crying. I expect she still is.
      Learned the words from Daddy with his whompy-jawed
      tune and I wonder now what happened to that baby—
      did he grow up and build houses like his pa?
       
      Did she fail to thrive? On the overnight shift
      the police scanner wails of a body in a dumpster,
      and Daddy’s sent out, reporter’s notebook cornering
      through a hole in his pocket, to get the story.
       
      Heat hovers like a fiddle’s dying note as he
      looks over the edge, steps away, loses his
      stomach. You’d think the baby was sleeping,
      he tells Mama later, except for those blue lips
       
      and all the world’s dirges bury fire in his gut,
      round his shoulders into a weary refrain. Time comes
      years later and Daddy moves on to the by and by,
      the baby’s ballad stuck in his throat, the rhythm
       
      of her name unsung, not once lined out at a
      summer evening hymn sing, never whispered
      to shape notes washing like Jordan over the pews.
      Some tunes, they say, are just too hard to carry.

      from #85 – Musicians

      Jennifer Hambrick

      “In my first career, I performed as a professional flutist with major orchestras and in studio recording sessions. Classical music got under my skin during my tender years through an intense study of dance, and pop radio was the soundtrack for my adolescence. That musical immersion helped prepare me for all of my work with music, including my current career as a professional singer, classical music broadcaster, multimedia producer, and cultural journalist. I don’t often write poetry about music, but I do always write poetry—whatever the theme or subject—musically, by ear. The word-rhythms and vowel and consonant sounds I hear in my mind’s ear guide me through the creation of every poem I write. In this sense, the process of writing poetry is, for me, nothing short of making music with words, and the most important ingredient in my writing process is second nature to all good musicians: listening.”

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