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After he lost his teeth he began to pray,
And when his children went to college went to church.
and then played songs that used the same shuffle,
wrote more songs that sounded the same as the first
but played them to children, who could hear them.

His songs slowed down because his heartbeat had.
He was content to play the hits with friends in ski resorts.
He found it hard to sing the words of others without teeth
But charmed at once the eternally young and sick at heart.
A hole was in his life that he could barely touch.

He couldn’t recall what was inside except good times.
The songs he sings recall some dusty Southern town
He’d never been to. He invokes their sleepy traits
Never seen first hand, years outside the power grid,
when lights swung for the brakeman to move the train,

departing another sleepy town another porter, blackfaced,
introduced with a flourish of hands upon guitar strings

lulling the patrons in their cups another long weekend.