Karen Carpenter on Top of the World

My mother pushed the shopping cart at A & P,
buying Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and canned tuna,
while I stood transfixed in the magazine section,
reading the latest edition of Tiger Beat.
The Carpenters were on the loudspeakers,
they were everywhere that year,
like air or water, especially Karen Carpenter,
whose voice was as thrillingly deep and low
as the hush inside a Redwood grove,
smooth as a swatch of velvet held against your cheek.
The tabloids I read featured full-colored spreads
of her and her brother in their matching Dutch-boy haircuts,
mouths open, singing like celestial twins in perfect harmony.
I never guessed that she was shy
like me, that she would have preferred to hide
behind her drum set rather than be displayed
like an awkward doll. I didn’t know she was criticized
for her weight, or that she longed for a life
off the road. Over the years I noticed
how she became thinner and thinner,
collarbones and scapulae jutting out,
but still this seemed to be part of the larger joke
about them, how corny they were, how wholesome, how “good”,
while the real artists were out getting drunk
and trashing hotel rooms. She was truly good, no joke,
she was superb, her voice never cracked or faltered,
no matter the pain, she never hit a sour note.
She just kept crooning, mainlining comfort
into our ears like a well-brought-up daughter.
Until the very moment
she up and disappeared.

*

Eva Cassidy Live at Blues Alley

She had a cold and didn’t think she sounded good,
but it was the only night they were able to record,
and she’d scraped together all the money
she’d been able to save
from her day job in a tree nursery, so they had to go ahead
and use it and now
it’s what we have left of her,
and it’s live, and it’s still happening,
here, in my beat-up little Honda,
decades after her death,
where I’m listening to her sing “Fields of Gold”
like she knows that she won’t last the year,
because the wistful way she’s conjuring
those fields of barley
where she’s promising we’ll walk someday,
fools no one. To listen for that blue note
under the melody could shatter you
but you have to let it
pierce the place in your heart
where you’ve been pretending you’ll never die.
That’s what I hear anyway,
stopped at a red light
while some joker who doesn’t use his turn signal
almost T-bones me. I know
when the song’s over she’ll leave the stage
forever. Still the clear strains
continue, even though those fields
will be covered in snow, much too soon.
Because this kind of truth lives on and on–
it is made of silver
                                    and light
                                                      and bone.

*

Alison Luterman has published four previous collections of poetry, most recently In the Time of Great Fires (Catamaran Press,) and Desire Zoo (Tia Chucha Press.) Her poems have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Sun, Rattle, and elsewhere. She writes and teaches in Oakland, California. www.alisonluterman.net