The song is...: Welcome to Sharon Waller Knutson!

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.

Photograph by Sharon Waller Knutson

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

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.