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The Last Chance
"I need it like old people need good shoes," -Charles Parker
For Allen Eager
Allen, the world once taught us to ignore
Its song and sing our own but, Jim, that song
Was costly. Sonny, Freddie, Lester, Bird
Died in your arms or fell like fruit before
Your outstretched fingers. Were they all so wrong.
Harvest accumulated in a minor third
For flies that circle ceaselessly and buzz
So loud one scarcely hears the horn still stuck
In the wall. Instead, echoes and echoes
Sound softly as this concrete crossroads does
Its funky and tortuous job. With luck
More ghostly advisors may come and doze
Half smiling 'neath the blooming tree. I doubt it.
Instead, flash and filigree, shook out, may blind us,
May tin our ear. I dreamt long lines of shining
New Ferraries, driven by the dead, all lit,
With Yardbird in the lead; so lapped by lust
They drift like objects Poe predicted, drift and ring,
Till each, brakes failing, cannot make the turn.
They lie wheels spinning in the empty air;
A vari-colored ferris wheel with hues
Of absolution on the coming turn.
Mechanics amble out and tinker with its gears.
It moves, one last grand prix, its organ plays the blues.