POEM: Leonard Cohen In Alabama

Leonard Cohen In Alabama
(for Marian Carcache)

Leonard is singing to Marianne.
I’ve got my window open to catch
the sound of a thunderstorm, rare
here in this time of drought.

My office is like a bomb shelter —
I could turn up the music if I wanted to.
But I don’t. There’s no sweeter
sound than the rain outside.

I imagine Leonard in Alabama
in an immaculately tailored gray suit,
long legs carrying him down
the dusty Federal Road

through towns where the mail
no longer runs. His close-
cropped hair the only commonality
with the all-but-forgotten farmers

who watch silently from atop their tractors
as he passes like a ghost or the taxman.
Decades ago he might have carried
a guitar, now he worries the brim

of the fedora that’s never far from his side.
He learned to dress this way from his father,
the same way these men learned
to work the land from their fathers,

the same way all men are bound
by what little a father can teach,
what a mother can fill in.
Bound and determined and

waiting for the rain to end
so I can make it to my car.
That’s not true. I don’t mind the rain.
I’m waiting for this song to finish.

10 December 2012
Auburn, AL

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Photo credit: Jimmy Emerson