THE BARN RADIO
Over the years there were several but in a way
There was only one, the same radio shape-
Shifting, its antenna growing longer like a horn,
Its face at once sleeker and less beautiful,
Its voices more numerous and distinct. In 1941
It balanced on a beam over my grandfather’s head
Where he sat on a stool milking sixteen cows
In stanchions (each had a name) when he heard
What the Japanese had done and knew the world
Had changed. One evening in late November
Twenty-two years later, same barn, different radio,
He heard the news out of Dallas and remembered
That day in December, recalling the markings
(an archipelago of white water and black islands)
Of the cow he’d been milking when he heard.
And so on that November day he lived through
That December day too. Seventy years later,
In another month with an ember smoldering
In its name, my father heard the second plane
Crash into the tower. By then the cows were being
Milked by machines in the parlor, and were numbered
Instead of named. The radio sat on a shelf on the wall.
That morning my father thought of his father,
Hearing that the President had been shot in Dallas
And that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor,
So that on that September day he lived through
That day in November and that day in December too.
And they heard it all through the same barn radio,
Its antenna trained violently towards town.
Over the years there were several but in a way
There was only one, the same radio shape-
Shifting, its antenna growing longer like a horn,
Its face at once sleeker and less beautiful,
Its voices more numerous and distinct. In 1941
It balanced on a beam over my grandfather’s head
Where he sat on a stool milking sixteen cows
In stanchions (each had a name) when he heard
What the Japanese had done and knew the world
Had changed. One evening in late November
Twenty-two years later, same barn, different radio,
He heard the news out of Dallas and remembered
That day in December, recalling the markings
(an archipelago of white water and black islands)
Of the cow he’d been milking when he heard.
And so on that November day he lived through
That December day too. Seventy years later,
In another month with an ember smoldering
In its name, my father heard the second plane
Crash into the tower. By then the cows were being
Milked by machines in the parlor, and were numbered
Instead of named. The radio sat on a shelf on the wall.
That morning my father thought of his father,
Hearing that the President had been shot in Dallas
And that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor,
So that on that September day he lived through
That day in November and that day in December too.
And they heard it all through the same barn radio,
Its antenna trained violently towards town.