41. The Fickle Gramophone

It happened then
I dug through
My dark basement
In the afternoon
An ancient gramophone
Caught me eye
And held it
Some vinyls lay
Abandoned in sheets
I placed one
Upon the gramophone
“Eye of the Tiger”
It screeched loudly
Disk was fine
I tried again
“September”
It got caught
Though the record
Was not scratched
The next played
A modern hit
“Rolling in the Deep”
The machine clawed
At the surface
The disk broke
My last attempt
“Brown-Eyed Girl”
The tuning swell
The control sublime
I listen contentedly
For hours there
But the gramophone
Seems to play
For itself alone
Remembering distant memories
And nothing else
Would it play.