Booker: Black Night Keeps on Falling

By Lee Meitzen Grue

Something stupid must have been a comment,

sometimes Malaguena,

came out like a Liberace tune.

What James booker played

was here like my mama when I needed it.

He wasn't a young man like Robert Johnson

or somebody I don't get to hear much like Blue Lu Barker.

Downtown he played at Lou and Charlie's

or uptown at the Maple Leaf. I'd go

across town to hear him.

There's something free about driving alone

at night, going into a bar

not to drink much or talk,

but to listen--anonymous

as pain,

a kind of emptiness filled like a belly

with dirty rice. Sometimes,

moving down St. Claude Avenue or St. Charles,

I'd ask myself, What's on your mind?

You're not black. You're a well-fed white woman living

in the richest country in the world.

I see too much.

Booker and headache powders

at Jimmy's corner store

work for anybody. Blues

feel and fall

all over you into the gaps.

They don't care who you are

because sorrow's common as dirt,

nothing's certain--people go.

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Source: In the Sweet Balance of the Flesh  by Lee Meitzen Grue. Austin, Texas: Plain View Press