Six weeks since that whisper rose
into the window of a stage
behind the Half Note's bar,
whisper Mingus let spread like a bruise,
Lester Young is dead, six weeks
since he fell from the sky,
dead off the plane from Paris,
and each night this goodbye's
gone more sensitive. Now
the flats are hid, and Handy's learned
to fold the sound of breath
inside his notes—the bleeding throat,
tongue's last epileptic flutter—
while Mingus thrills the bass
in waves of sound and fail
no microphone can hold.
Drinks tremble like the river
halfway from here to the grave,
pulled by wind or plummet,
cough of strings beneath the hand,
and uptown a tape is waiting
for magnets to say this again,
a teletype is writing a story
for tomorrow's Times—
a body pulled from a river
in Mississippi, with only fingers
for a name. Here
only the drinks are listening
as Ervin rises, ghosting Handy's lead,
and even they cannot hear
how the rivers heal their quiet,
how they fill their scars so perfectly
that remember feels like forget.
Then the breath is gone.
The wood hums a moment longer,
and each surface smoothes
till the glasses and the waters
are glass again and ready
to catch each clap,
each note that falls.