In Berrien County the radio was a weather system,

         fronts rolling in from Chicago, clear nights of AM hiss, & once in a while, like a stray kite,

         an accordion waddling through the static.

I was twelve. Or nine. Or every age at once.

         Music did that—made a room bigger than the room.

The kitchen with its linoleum galaxies,

         the hum of the fridge a mantra, my mother stirring soup with a spoon-baton

         to conduct the evening.

Schlager!—those candy-bright choruses

         that believed in love the way cartoons believe

in gravity: only until the cliff ends.

         Volksmusik!—boots on a plank floor,

the old countries stomping code into wood:

         we are here, we are still here.

The ’80s arrived in shoulder pads & optimism,

         but under the Walkman foam, beneath the hairspray halo, were older specters tapping time.

         Immigrants with shortened surnames,

pioneers whose music fit in a wagon:

         fiddle, breath, the long ache of leaving.

Melody is a hand-me-down coat

         you grow into & never quite fill.

A polka slips into a pop song.

         Even Springsteen, even Madonna—

listen close & there’s a barn somewhere,

         a river crossing, a last look back.

Saturday nights: the VFW flickered like a planetarium.

         Beer signs buzzed their neon insects.

An oom-pah bass thumped the heart’s wildest joke.

         Couples turned & twirled.

I didn’t have the language for this then.

         I only knew that music was a door you could carry,

that joy had a shuffle step,

         that sorrow could yodel & survive the echo.

Now, decades later, a song comes on—

         just three chords & a grin—

& I’m back on Red Arrow Highway,

         cornfields with their arms in the air,

the past singing not to be remembered

         but because it must.

Because it’s what sound does.