Accordion Poem by Tom Borek

Found this on the Providence Journal’s site.

My heart’s an accordion, it bellows my life, plays

polkas, sweet songs, sentimental tunes, ditties,

waltzes, marches, tangos, dirges.

The player plays, the player plays on.

The dance hall is congenitally frivolous, laughter endemic.

A Polish wedding in Central Falls. Men swill drinks,

beer and whiskey, they curse, shout, boast. They raucously

dance, stamp their feet. Wives and husbands and friends

whirl, the pine floor accepting their exuberance, as

it was meant to.

A Polish wedding in Central Falls. Where wooden houses

are compacted one by the other, along the streets. Brick mills flourish

along the river, guiding the Blackstone. People here work hard.

She dances stately as a Baroque court, my mother, with me.

We glide along the floor, partners dancing. The music in me and

outside, the band onstage oompahs beyond the contiguities

of Central Falls. He stolid, Slavic frame, blue eyes, and historicity

hark back to Polani. She’s there, not here.

Now glimmers her extinction. Death. Death from gray to black,

from reds, blues, yellows, magentas long since gone, and all the life

they inhabit. She shouts, she calls for Romenski, the undertaker

who buried her father. Romenski is dead, too. She doesn’t know.

The dance beat quickens.

The accordion player pulses a lullaby tonight. Little daughter

Rivka expects it. The music wafts around her, into the night,

around her, her dolls, drawings, favorite cat. Her eyes flicker shut,

softly. She’s asleep for tomorrow.