AM

AM

Summer Sundays when I was ten,

I’d sneak downstairs to the new stereo.

The sky was bright, the sun still hidden

behind the neighbor’s house.

I folded my knees against the brief morning chill 

and kept the volume at a whisper,

used the dial like a scalpel:

a squinch to the right, another,

straining to parse the loopy static.

With time I heard the pops and whines

as a jabbering crowd, and I’d choose

a voice, coax it into the room,

listening, listening, tuning again, 

newly, fanatically patient. 

First triumph, tinny music (Marty Robbins). But then:

when I found the big news station from Chicago - Chicago! - 

I gasped and kept my hand on the dial.

Once I heard country music from Oklahoma 

and once a very faint preacher in Nebraska.

This only lasted for a magic hour or so

before the local air began to stir,

Minneapolis muscling in 

with hog futures and weather.

I kept my secret, 

this sacred this time before the light, 

and as the everyday world returned

I knew the way beyond it 

was at the edge of my hearing. 

dkz