Radio In the Night

It was a sweet box
of hushed company for me,
a terrified-of-the-dark
six-year-old. Dad brought it
from his shop, placed
that small, brown square
with two button knobs
and papery speaker on a low table
by my bed. He squatted down,
his six-foot-two frame rolled
into a plaid flannel ball, to show
how to find a clear station
and keep the volume low. 

Through long nights as I lay
curled into cold sheets, and a thick blackness
pressed down the windows and floor,
that radio in the tarry night reached
out to me. Announcers with velvet tones,
singers tossing around jagged melodies
(my first hearing Ella), actors bringing
the Geen Hornet, Superman,
The Shadow to life--these
became threads to a safe world
through jet-black fear. 

A same darkness seeps now
into his brain, a pooling black tide
filling up the interstices of personality,
memory, the corn-ball humor.
Outside his window, yellow-stained maples
grapple with an early rain.
Late afternoon light brushes gray, slow shapes
across the walls. Tonight, I hold
his unknowing hand and read his favorite Psalms—
a voice in the gathering dark.