Eliana and I talk shit. We talk volumes,
mountains and their sunsets appear.
Tonight, we were talking about music.
We always talk about melodies, harmonies, dissonance
even when we talk about the psychology of starlings
and the way neurodivergent llamas invade our dreams.
Tonight, we weren’t talking about Matty Healy,
lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of The 1975,
and his organic willingness to make people happy,
even though that’s something we talk about a lot.
That’s a gift, you know, to make people happy
and you have to work at it. It’s a full-time job.
We were working at it, making each other happy,
talking about a folk festival I went to when I was 15.
I couldn’t remember where exactly, but it was in the Catskills.
Eliana is an archivist, and she said let me help you remember
and I said maybe Matty will help me remember
so I put on a song, Sincerity Is Scary, because it is.
It was dark outside and the llamas weren’t screaming
so Eliana went on the computer and found an article
in The New York Times, circa 1979, and there it was,
my memory: The Catskills Folk Festival in Andes, NY.
Sometimes when I talk with Eliana, my daughter,
I have to find a folk festival from the past
that still makes sense in the present.
All you have to do is talk to one another to find it,
to find each other, to have joy,
to listen to songs that are not even on the radio
but course through your blood
even though you have forgotten, even though Pete Seeger was there.
He played This Land Is Your Land, and no one could believe their ears,
but felt an irrefutable happiness,
oh, there was so much happiness.

*

Matthew Lippman is the author of six poetry collections. His latest book Mesmerizingly Sadly
Beautiful (2020) is published by Four Way Books. It was the recipient of the 2018 Levis Prize. His
next collection, We Are All Sleeping With Our Sneakers On, will be published by Four Way Books
in 2024.