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: “Tracy Chapman” by David Jibson, which appears in The Poeming Pigeon: Poems about Music:
Tracy Chapman
Give Me One Reason presents a real challenge.
What reason, if I’m allowed only one,
would be good enough?
My granddaughter, who idolizes Ariana Grande,
asks me who is singing. I tell her.
Then she wants to know if it’s a man or a woman
because she can’t tell from the voice or the name.
I listen to Tracy strum and pick her way
through the sharps and sevenths
of her perfect blues progression.
I answer back to her,
“Give me one reason why it matters.”
