Mark Prudowsky

Listening to Coltrane Plays the  Blues

sungleam.

hill home

trimmed in a

dipped-in-the-sea blue.

a place which like many others

might escape your recall

save for the rapid tap of the top-hat,

the thumping lightly bass drum,

the didja hear bout the time

lick on the keyboard, the reed brassy

sass of been an awfully long day and

sure glad it’s over hellyeah you can pour me a whiskey

and let’s kick it and see where it goes.

             the curved horn and the one who bends it

in the room overlooking the sea

hid in the a cold mist that rolls in with the dusk.

how else could their beauty escape you?  

how could it?

without the slow quiet spaces between blow and draw

how else would one  know what it means?

if the gaps make you shift in your chair

you’ll not wanna hear: other places

warn you away.

then you get it. the ghost isn’t reaching

to pull you in but to push you away. you know

this as the light’s patter on walls.

know that one memory wrecks, another repairs and makes whole.

nah! you don’t believe that.

how well do you know the language? how well do you feel

when it tells you the one who could forgive disappears?

***

***