It was a Zenith Trans-Oceanic, with rows of red-orange push buttons
and serial black tuning knobs that said the path to wonder commenced
with a frequency indicator floating like a bubble in a carpenter’s level.
He listened to WSM, the Grand Ole Opry—my father, Saturday nights,
drifting to sleep to Hank Snow or Roy Acuff or a bluegrass band
he could tell you the history of. Sleepwear consisted of a t-shirt
and J.C. Penney pajama bottoms. When he and my mother still
slept together, she would be awake on her side of the bed—
propped up and reading, an L&M burning in a crystal ashtray.
Telling him, Turn it down! until the singer’s voice was a whisper.
Whatever happens when we die, suffering will have to be explained.
Maybe God will pass out the Trans-Oceanics, and the dead will huddle
around the set, listening to a cloud-nine version of a fireside chat.
Maybe she’ll find him—my father—and they’ll argue about volume.
I like to think we’d have hands to tune notched knobs. Eyes to judge
where the Nashville station is clear and the voices of hearts absolve us
and death is a song we automatically sing, knowing all the words.
Maybe we’re dead and the trespass of living rises like so much smoke.