Originally written and posted in February 2006
Frank Sinatra
and the big bands
blared from the radio on the kitchen window.
The radio was thoroughly modern,
a transistor translator of vacuum tube tunes;
a dull red styrene square with a folding handle,
and a grille like the ’55 Chevy in the driveway.
My mother bustled under the soundwaves,
pouring the bacon fat from breakfast into tins,
like folk did during the depression and the war.
She thought she knew weary,
though her hair was still dark,
and the dances were still fresh –
but there was the unambitious husband,
and me, and the two other kids
who wanted to hear the Beatles.
Today in the house of pizza,
the teenagers roll their eyes
when the radio plays the Beatles
and the other classic hits;
there is no escaping my generation.
On that kitchen window,
the red radio with the hotrod grille no longer plays,
its solid state was recycled long ago;
but my mother remains,
sitting in the living room with her knitting,
her gray and thinning hair,
and the numbness in her leg.
And I am playing
Frank Sinatra.