He was filled with beauty, so filled he could not stop the shadows
from their walk around his horn, blasting cobwebs in the Fillmore's ceiling.
Somewhere dawn makes up for the night before, but he is floating.
Dead in the water. And yet, my lover tells me, he saw him shimmering.

As did others. It could have been the acid. Or fragmented harmonics.
His reed ancestral. This perilous knowledge. The band went home,

shivering. A girl threw roses in the water. Carnations, daisies. And bright red sashes.
Like ones the Chinese use for funeral banners. A drummer intoned chants

From the Orient. Police wrote up the news. Years later, my lover told me
Friends would hear the whisper, then a tone, full throttle from the wind.

Ghosts on Second Avenue, jazzmen in the falling stars.
If you catch one, your hands will glitter.