I'm travelling through the ranches in Myakka,
and the dust and the heat and the sagging clumps
of humped-back brahmas are beginning to get to me,
so I pull off at some windowless,
cement-block bar, but no one's there
except the bartender, and a young girl
on a stage in the corner, singing country-western, blues.
Her name's Carol she says, she's a music major
at FSU, in Tallahassee, making some extra money
for herself, for her little baby girl Cheryl,
and I know this sounds like I'm making it up,
but when I tell her my name, she looks at me
like my hair's on fire, says she's read my poems,
Well, some of them. Not bad, she says,
especially the one with the small boy,
and I'm wondering whether she's putting me on
or she's crazy, and then she tells me she even
wrote a song on it, that she'd seen it in a magazine
from out West, where she wishes she were now,
instead of here, at Lamar's, and I laugh,
tell her at least she's getting paid, and not
just in copies, and she gives me this look like
What do we have here? So I say to her,
Why don't we stay in touch, send each other
some stuff from time to time,
but of course neither of us does, and then
four years later I get a call from her,
she's in town she says, playing at the Hyatt,
she'd like to see me, her little boy Randy
is with her, He's six now, Remember Randy?
and I tell her, Sure, but all the time I'm thinking,
What little boy? It was a girl, but the next thing I know
I'm at the Hyatt and she's on stage in this black silk dress
that keeps crinkling like anthracite, and when she sees me,
she winks, nods down to her left, and I see him
sitting next to the bandstand, the little boy,
or whatever he is, and he's looking up at her
and laughing and clapping and he has this little,
checkered sports-coat on and a black bow tie
and these tiny black shoes, Like a ventriloquist's dummy,
I keep saying to myself, and she says to the boy, Randy,
this is Justin, you remember Justin don't you, the man
mommy met at Lamar's who wrote the poem
about the boy that mommy wrote the song about?
and he's just sitting there, beaming, looking up at us
like he's in heaven or church or somewhere
only he can imagine, and then she tells me
she's sorry she never wrote or anything but life
has been hectic, and I look at the boy
who keeps changing and then
back at her like I'll bet it has,
but she doesn't miss a beat, she's
right on to me, telling me her song about
the little boy is the best one on her album, Everyone
says so, even Randy, and all the time she's grinning at me like
Can you believe this? And then I feel someone
push the boat away from the dock and I'm
drifting around in circles, looking up at her,
thinking, God, how I love this woman.