Music, music, music
February 17, 2023
Every night
I tuck my teen in bed
and close his door, humming
the lullaby you used to sing.
Most kids of his generation
don't know "A Bushel
and a Peck." 1950:
you were glamorous,
flirting with the bugler
you would later marry.
I don't think he remembers
"put another nickel in,
in the nickelodeon,"
though you sang it
when he was swaddled
in velcro-edged blankets.
Another top hit
from when you were fourteen,
the age he's
barreling toward
now.
Songs that didn't make it into this draft of this poem include "Sisters, Sisters" (White Christmas, 1954 -- the year my parents married), "Annie Mae, Where Are You Going," (origins unknown, though I suspect it's a camp song from the late 40s or early 50s), and "The Billboard Song" which exists in many folk versions, though of course I'm attached to the one Mom used to sing. Sometimes I wonder which songs from my son's childhood -- or, perhaps, from mine -- will delight and comfort him in the (hopefully distant) future when I'm gone.