Einstein & Etta James
I’m fourteen when Einstein
is in Princeton
He’s old & heading out of breath
as I am fresh and new at breathing
in some
But there the landscapes of the space
between our ears divides
Al used levers of his mind for lifting
mass in time, while mine
took to bass guitar of R & B
which thumped in head
and loins in adolescent
instants
Einstein’s gone, but his poster’s on our wall
—if you were stepping down our stairs you’d
glimpse him in overcoat and hat
strolling through our stairwell, wry smile,
moustache, life-sized poster, white and black,
shedding light on light (you couldn’t miss him)
Same thing, mid-fifties, bluesy
Etta James, to me, was winsome
Strong and sexy
beautiful and sure,
So I weighed the heft of
his and hers and took them both
to heart and mind, and in terms
of back-and-forth between the two,
there certainly has been some
I took to both, and
then some
by Jim Culleny
12/15/18
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