To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.
Please enjoy today’s selection: “Let it Be” by Connie Post, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems about Music:
Let it Be
When I was nine
Paul McCartney’s voice
seeped through the bottom cracks
of all the doors in the house
“When I find myself in times of trouble”
how a young girl plays
the same music in her room
as if the singer knows
her name
her crumpled, simple thoughts
“Mother Mary comes to me”
how a young girl
believes the man inside
the record player knows
when she is taking off her dress
“Whisper words of Wisdom”
how a man’s voice can understand
there is no mother
no words
no rosary bead
sturdy enough for this heavy a prayer
“Let it Be, Let it Be”
and she does
Let it be, only to let it fall
as she swallows the rosary
the beads, the cross
the song
and it crumbles
like the lyrics
that broke in her hand
upon learning
how to leave a room