I'm aware that the picture —
middle-aged, middle-class white man,
born 3,000 miles from the Mississippi
Delta, trying and failing to reproduce
the incomparable harmonica sounds
of James Cotton or Little Walter —
borders on the absurd (and, in fact,
crosses that border when the man resorts
to YouTube tutorials posted by Japanese
teenagers), but none of this matters when,
five whiskies in at 3 a.m., I manage
to hit the two-hole draw just right, before
sliding upward into the blue third while
also catching just enough of the bent fourth,
and in that elemental yowl of train whistle,
howling wolf, and wailing child, bypass
the boundary between sorrow and catharsis.