There Was Music in His Head


There was music in his head from birth;
who didn’t talk
but listened early,
and danced before he could walk.
He slouched in the far corner at school
so he could hear more clearly,
and the drone of teachers’ voices didn’t interfere.
He grooved down crowded streets with a jive and a shuffle,
his fingers snapping from jangling arms
his body slack as a saxophone solo
and his eyes half-closed, conjuring notes.

A jazzman lives from gig-to-gig and hand-to-hand,
in smoky clubs and packed-in dance halls
and fancy ballrooms
when there were still big bands.
He loves fat Cubans and skinny women
who are mostly suckers for a slick musician
and get loose-limbed and easy as the night gets old.
There are endless temptations in after-hours bars,
like boot-leg whisky and crooked cards.
And young men
sprawled-out in eye-glazed bliss, just bone and skin,
one sleeve rolled-up to the elbow.
But if he minds the dangers
even a jazzman ages gracefully;
because while the women don’t, the music stays;
and time’s so-slow-and-mellow when he plays.

An old man in a snappy suit and a black fedora
— pounding honky-tonk piano in a back-street bar,
or hitting rim-shots
in a strip-club
after dark.