Recently, through the poetry community Verse-Virtual, I met the Arizona poet Sharon Waller Knutson. We have been corresponding about poetry and a few other things. Tonight I'd like to post a few of her poems for you to enjoy.
Stormy Sunday
Cow crooner he calls me
as I warble Willie and Waylon
from my lightning lit living room
to carousing caroling cows
scrambling for shelter
as thunder trumpets and throbs
cumulus clouds circle
wind whistles and wails
dandelions droop and drowse
in a rambling rustlers’ rain
Originally published in Your Daily Poem.
Music Man
for Bobby
At the café, the gray hair musician
in the bushy beard and mustache,
plays the guitar with his fingers
and the drums with his feet.
After five decades of performing
in bars, cafes and trailer parks,
he still knows how to draw a crowd.
He belts out Elvis, Johnny Cash
and Tennessee Ford classics
in a deep growly voice. As his fingers
pick the strings, a fox tail, hanging
from the guitar, swings to the beat.
He jokes that he only knows three songs
and he sings them frontwards
and backwards and he just bought
his guitar at the pawn shop.
The crowd dances, claps and laughs
although they’ve heard them all before
as they drink their beer and wine
and eat their steaks and fish and chips.
Originally published in Sharon's chapbook Desert Directions.
Photograph by Sharon Waller Knutson
Country Royalty
In memory of Wanda and Gene
In his white goatee and suspenders,
his Dobro guitar electrifies
the room and sets it afire.
She looks tiny and quiet
next to the loud giant bass
until her big voice fills the room.
Tired of traveling the country
playing blue grass festivals, they
settle in a double wide at the foot
of the Superstitions, where valley
musicians gather to jam
and down Jell-O shooters.
Even after the move to assisted living
they perform with friends
in the rec hall and at a local bar
When she loses her breath
and he his memory,
they hang up their instruments,
spending his last days listening
to music they made together.
After he is gone, she sips a martini
at the local café, taps her feet
to the rhythm as she listens
to her favorite country band.
Originally published in Sharon's chapbook Desert Directions.
Photograph by Sharon Waller Knutson
Photograph by Sharon Waller Knutson
Best Audience Ever
Silver haired musicians
crank up amps and hearing aids,
strum stiff fingers on strings
of guitars and keyboards,
voices aged like fine wine
yodel and twang
like Hank and Patsy
to a packed crowd.
But no one complains
about the loud music,
sour notes, sad songs
or lousy tips.
Clapping to the beat,
old bodies in wheel chairs
and walkers and curved
spines sway and sing along
as aching bones and hearts,
loneliness, sadness and regret
melt away like snow flakes,
for this hour, they are all
sealed in a time capsule
and transported to another
life where they were young,
happy and healthy.
The last two poems are about the gigs Sharon's husband would play with his band.
Sunday Morning at the Laundromat
You can hear the country music
when you step out of the Village Inn
and the Ace Hardware across the parking lot.
But you can’t tell where it is coming from
until you follow the sound to the back
of the Laundromat where my husband’s band
is playing guitars and singing country songs
to the steady rhythm of washing machines banging
like drums as they swish blankets in soapy water.
A young mother taps her foot
and sings the chorus as she loads
her towels into the washer
as her preschool daughter whirls around
like the clothes in the dryers behind her,
her blonde braids and hands flying in the air.
A white haired couple stop folding clothes
long enough to do the jitterbug
while other customers listen, watch and clap
as they wait for their clothes to wash and dry.
Originally published in Your Daily Poem and Sharon's chapbook Desert Directions.
Yogurt Gig
My husband gets
to be a child again
playing guitar and singing
in the yogurt shop.
Mesmerized by the sound,
children of all ages dance
and clap as they lick
their swirling cones
In-between songs,
preschoolers gather
to touch the strings
of the electric guitar,
then jump back and giggle
as sound reverberates,
surprised to find out
where all the noise came from.
When it is time to leave,
children waving dollar bills
flit like fireflies to the tip jar
and then disappear into the night.
Originally published in Sharon's chapbook Desert Directions.
Sharon Waller Knutson lives in a house her husband, Al built out of clay from the land on a dirt road in the middle of a wildlife habitat and open range of the Arizona desert. A retired journalist, she writes narrative poems for readers who don’t normally read poetry. In 2014, Sharon sold her chapbook, My Grandmother Smokes Chesterfields, to winter visitors from all over the world in a café where her husband played guitar and sang country music. Her customers told her they expected her to publish a new poetry book when they returned each year so, in 2015, she published Desert Directions, about her life in the desert. In 2016, she published They Affectionately Call Her a Dinosaur, poems about her customers and other seniors in her life who started new careers, businesses, and relationships after they retired. In 2017, she published I Did it Anyway, poems about how she broke the glass ceiling in the newspaper business in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when women were typically relegated to the society pages. Al retired from his music gig in 2019, so now he and Sharon stay busy watering assorted critters and enjoying their 11 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren.
Now let's listen to a little country music!
Here is Elvis' version of "Snowbird": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz48tw4gYsQ&list=PLaO_sxc_20apr0_PcACR6JTHsFbYGWOQX
Patsy Cline sings "Sweet Dreams" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imafHIq2210
I'll finish with some Hank Williams, first "Jambalaya": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-BQpRqmwM0
then "Honky Tonkin'": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kN17OTQIGqg
and then his "Lost Highway": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92dezZCxer8
