Aaron Fischer
Blind Willie Johnson, "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground"
At 11 billion miles Voyager clears
the turbulent solar wind, the nearest star
a give-or-take 44,000 years.
Blind Willie Johnson is in the house, master
of the bottleneck, one of The Sounds of Earth
etched on a gold-plated record — mariachi, ragas, Bach,
thunder, Mozart, dogs, Satchmo … Johnson’s near-wordless
call and response, mmm-hmmm … well-mmm … preaching
his own hard gospel, crooning and humming
like a man searching for a path he knows doesn’t exist,
the slide reaching out and falling back, climbing
and faltering until we can hear what he doesn’t
have to say out loud:
I am the dark night. I am the cold ground.
Other work by Aaron Fischer