I surf and click, then raise his complex shade,

the presence and the poundage of a man

who took care of business, transcending his name

along the road between White Station,

Mississippi, and the juke joints of Chicago.

 

A diminutive screen contains him,

as he expounds the meaning of the blues –

a patriarch and mason, who had grasped his letters

like thorns, until his labours found a way

through the entanglement of clauses.

 

And see him as he takes the stage

in his ample suit, his ululation rising

from its buried source, a landscape

of estrangement where his mother

sets her face against his devil’s music.