Sunday morning after Sunday night

 

This morning I’m playing Chuck Berry,

as we all should.

Last evening as I said an early aged

good-night to my phone,

it gave me one last gasp

of news: Chuck Berry was dead.

*

He was slightly before my time,

but I came to him out of curiosity,

bought a double-album through

the Record Club of America,

Chuck Berry’s Great Twenty-Eight.

*

Until I released his voice this morning,

I’d forgotten.  When visiting my brother

at college in the early seventies, we’d

heard Chuck Berry in concert,

reduced to opening act, but there

with novelty hit, ‘My Ding-a-Ling’

*

which does not number among

his great songs and will not be

heard this morning, a Sunday.

*

In churches today rather than

the usual hymns

congregations should be

singing Chuck Berry.

He saved America and still

might yet again.