Later that night

 Later that night 

When we got back to Uncle Albert’s after we’d eaten the whitefish chowder, he asked me if I would do him a favor. I started to say, “Depends,” but he didn’t let me finish.

     “I know,” he said. “Depends on what it is.”

     “Yes.”

     “Would you read to me?”

     “What?” Not in the sense of “what do you want me” to read, more like “say what?” But he ignored the tone, or he pretended to.

     “There are some poems I want to hear in someone’s voice other than my own,” he said.

e e cummings

They were “just a few, three or four, maybe five” by e e cummings. It didn’t matter that I had a cold and was a little hoarse, he wanted to hear them in another voice, however cracked and sore; he wanted to hear them without seeing them.

     So I read him, as well as I could - they are hard to read: “next to of course god america i”; “i sing of Olaf glad and big”; “as freedom is a breakfast food”; and “anyone lived in a little how town,” though before I did, I asked, “Just read them? You don’t want to talk about them, I hope.”

     “No,” he said. “Just read them first.”

     “Then what? Then talk about them?”

     “What’s with you?” he asked. “You can talk about poems. I’ve heard you.”

     “Not often,” I said, “if that’s true. When?” (Meaning, “When did you hear me?)

     “Just read them,” he said. “We’ll see.”

[You may hear here.]

Then, after: “No,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about them. Just read the last two again.”

08.14.17

_______________

Links to the poems are here:

        https://allpoetry.com/next-to-of-course-god-america-i

        https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-sing-olaf-glad-and-big

        https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52946/as-freedom-is-a-breakfastfood

        https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/anyone-lived-pretty-how-town