James Appleby

Two Musicians in the Family, or, My Ancestor Ruins His Career by Buying a Barrel Oregon

I like this most of all the family lies.
Great-grandfather, or great-great if you like,

sold fruit to sailors at the dock – but thrift
and all my fathers’ bloodlines never mixed:

in matchstick fingers watch a paycheck burn.
It’s not our fault. No music box unlearns

the tune encoded in its copper sheet.
I might not know the salesman but the breed

I know on sight: the pitch of smile, the price:
we’re suckers for it, grandfather and I.

The potholes made it sing. We wheeled it home.
Our footsteps wrote their notes into the road –

then fruit was out. We cranked the lacquered box
and danced, and sang our futures at the dock.

So you’ll forget that I’m inventing this,
great-grandad, and the fact you don’t exist,

to dig the earworm out from where it sleeps:
I hear that bloodborne music and I keep

its time, and if I syncopate and fear,
I find my balance in the inner ear.

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