Monday Poem

New Vinyl

…..elegy

to take an album in your hands
to feel its slight heft
to free it from its clear synthetic skin
to slip it from its cardboard cover
to scan its art, to flip it over, read,
then slide it from its paper inner sleeve
with care (platter’s rim to palm just so)
so as not to grease and soil
its lyric
grooves with finger oil
which might later cause
a lead-riff smother

to hold in hands —but only by its rim
between two palms— to catch the lightglaze
caroming from its onyx spiral, cast
like hairs in onyx vinyl

to drop its center hole upon a hub
and, as it spins, to lift the diamond arm
above the disk and set its carbon tip
to spinning rifts
……………………..… (with steady
surgeon’s chance)
…………………………
to do its
oscillating dance,
………………………..
its ricocheting ride
off
microcliffs

to send vibrations out
as turning table shifts
and shadows scatter

ah— in that sweet tick of space & time
music’s all that matters

Jim
2/15/18