“On an 1894 Preacher’s Traveling Reed Organ” by Christine Potter

October 25, 2024Posted by

Christine Potter

ON AN 1894 PREACHER’S TRAVELING REED ORGAN

It probably survived by being broken, never
wired-up for someone’s psychedelic band
in the ’60s, not interesting to children who’d
have abused it casually as they do aged dogs
 
they are told not to bother. Shaped like a tiny
chapel itself: black wood, tarnished gilt, legs
meant to fold under so it could be carried.
Weak and tired as any of us are when love
 
surprises us and we find ourselves needed
once again. My husband has repaired it and
playing it is like riding your first bicycle uphill
on a warm day full of white-flowering trees,
 
or maybe like your grandmother’s voice, not
when she was scolding you but when she
sang the alleluias from “The Strife Is O’er,”
and freed your hair from the braids you hated
 
so she could brush it for you. See? It’s just the
two of you in your bedroom, after supper, and
the shades are pulled down against the length
of the light. She stands behind you, lost in song.
 

—from Rattle #85, Fall 2024
Tribute to Musicians

__________

Christine Potter: “Churches keep a lot of musicians going, and not just spiritually: they pay them. A church gig, if you can face Sunday (or in temples, Saturday) morning, is an excellent thing. A church musician was the last thing I thought I’d ever end up being, but then I married an organist/choir director who realized that all those folk-rock ambitions I had in the ’70s weren’t for naught. They could be useful if he needed a soprano, someone to figure out how to play the tower chimes at a job we worked together in the Bronx, someone to play dulcimer with the children’s choir … all I needed was some vocal training. So he provided it. After that we were ‘two for the price of one.’ I guess I went pro at our first sushi lunch (a tradition of ours) after picking up the envelope after a funeral. That sounds ghoulish—and it isn’t. Church music taught me to laugh and cry at the same time. I think that’s the first thing a poet needs to know.” (web)

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