Pale Blues
         --the night I missed Duke Ellington
 
The suave one, already sick and months away
from death, would have loved me madly
had I shown, even in my silly bellbottoms,
my scruffy parka, my contempt for an elegance
forged from more than a white tuxedo.
Johnny Hodges and Billy Strayhorn dead,
Ben Webster long gone--it was nothing
like the glitter of 1941, but no matter:
had it been the Cotton Club and not
icy New Hampshire, I wouldn't have heard
a thing. I lounged in my room no more than
a hundred yards from the theater,
amped up on some pale boy blues
long melted from my mind like the flurries
crossing my sill that night thirty years ago.
 
Had I shown he might have hit a riff, though,
to lift even me a few inches out of my seat,
some chord so blue I could taste it.
But I knew without knowing in those days. 
I was the star, the moon, the wheeling night
above Smarts Mountain.  I did not need
that dapper genius showing me anything
about the music of the spheres.
 
Walking to the snack bar later, I saw
the tour bus grumbling in winter air,
stooped black men loading instrument cases,
and I did not pause to see if I might recognize
his weary face, those famous sagging eyes,
or if perhaps he was already racing in a solo car
down I-91, the gig well gone in his mind,
some scrap of new rhythm seeming
to rise from the drone of tires,
the tiny squeal of wind in the side vents.
 
 
 
 
Crab, Lobsters, Monkfish, Conger Eel, & Squid


I am so glad I'm not Queen, having to display
no spark of irritation while schoolgirls curtsy stiffly,
Irishmen on street corners scowl and drag hard
on their cigarettes as my motorcade passes,
and I must smile and appear politely fascinated
as I am shown "more than forty varieties
of fresh seafood" at the fishmarket, "including
crab, lobsters, monkfish, conger eel, and squid."
I am so glad no one photographs me being assisted
out of my own car or waits in a cold rain
for two hours just for the chance to glimpse me
waving once before I must disappear into
the new youth center for its dedication ceremony.
 
But even more, I am glad I do not have to listen
to those speeches in my honor, or have someone
close by my side at all times to ensure I am comfortable
and asking if I should like some tea.  Sometimes
I like to just wander down the gray sidewalk
with no destination at all, following my dog
as he lazily sniffs the bushes and windblown trash
caught in a chainlink fence, and whether or not
I like the cut of the fence, or if I am enjoying
my aimless journey down Thorne Street headed
toward Union, no soul on earth shall inquire.