SONNET
FOR JOHNNY
MATHIS

Useless to try to decipher the nucleic code
from which the glassmith cells blew your larynx.
The record's named Heavenly and I'll be damned
if it's not, granted in a midcentury way—drenched
in reverb, harp notes and strings aswoon
at the touch of horsehair bows, backdropping
like sonic drapery your floating-feather vocals.
Sinatra can go to hell, even Elvis I'd blaspheme
to keep you crooning Moonlight Becomes You
all through this American apocalypse, vibrato
bending the sky as bombers catch fire and fall and
that flag is shrapnel-shredded to pink ribbon—
the Voice of Romance, sound-tracking a disaster
ballet and rising like pure vapor to paradise.