Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2022
Still Singing Everything Diane Kendig In response to Joy Harjo Oh, Joy, we have been too long on the road with radio, Spotify, Sirius—seriously! The moneyed music, not much attuned to tunes, it’s true, for planting, for growing, for harvesting. But children still sing how row by row gonna make our garden grow and band kids on buses still sing a hundred bottles of beer: there’s our getting drunk song. My father sang everything he knew all day from his days when his family of thirteen got kicked off the farm to the streets of Massillon and Canton, the one about roses he was chosen to sing as a teen, then all the army songs, and everything in the metal case of seventy-eights: lyrics or no: we all wah-wahed The Basin Street Blues. He sent us to camp, where we learned a round about loving rolling hills and daffodils, taught it to him when we came home. His last two long days of shouting in pain with no relief since hospice wasn’t around on weekends, he finally slipped into silence for two more days and nights, when I sang everything to him, especially the one about coming to the garden alone the first night. The second night, I made friends with the silence without him. No other has ever known.
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