Strings of the Great Depression

In your chair, covered in a shawl to warm you, hot milk by your side, arthritic, gnarled fingers pulling limply on elastics (ones that held your meds together), you speak of your farmer-father, coming home without the radio he'd promised, and of rubber bands, how he stretched them over a can, plucking them with his thumb. For music, he said, while you eat.

Andreas Gripp