Untitled Elvis Poem

He makes a small living these days
impersonating himself. He isn’t good at it, they tell him.
It’s the age, as much as anything. 70 something now –
he’s forgotten the exactly – it feels like the edge
of something, like drawing the draft number,
or, more: like that day at Fort Hood when they cut
his famous hair. Still, they tell him, he’s got –
something. The voice, maybe, a good voice, a sense
of rhythm. And something in the eyes. Not Elvis,
not that innocent smoulder, but something,
they tell him. He’s let his hair go white.
At night he noodles on an old National:
plays Hound Dog, old hymns. Walks up
Stairway to Heaven like it’s a new song.