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Sonnets from Rock and Roll #2
by David W. Landrum
Take a sad song and make it better
— John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Hey Jude”
Take the Hank Williams songs that made me cry
when I was a small child listening to
my father’s .45’s, wondering why
my parents and my relatives would do
something incomprehensible: like songs
about sorrow, songs about loss and pain,
stark lamentations chronicling wrongs
and miseries, with sorrowful refrains
like wedding bells will never ring for me
or I’m so lonesome I could cry — the art
of loss that made me share the misery
the singer sang. It overwhelmed my heart.
Now I can understand it. In our youth
we cannot know that sorrow is life’s truth.
David W. Landrum teaches Literature at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. His poetry and fiction have appeared widely. He edits the on-line poetry journal, Lucid Rhythms, www.lucidrhythms.com.
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