“His devotion to jazz was primary,” she said,
as she finished off a second glass of Bailey’s.
Someday my prince will come, she said,
without scare quotes or inverted commas,
the drums of a certain Paul Motian,
December 15th Nineteen Fifty Eight
not simply a beat- a subtle interplay
like walking out of West Fourth Street
the ghost of the Iceman Cometh
and Willa Sibert Cather on Washington Square
Unnecessary Noise Prohibited, reads the sign
as you approach what used to be the jazz bar
“but he was too inward looking,” she said,
as the sharp-angled attack of the piano
and the straight-ahead drive of the bass
(as the anonymous music critic penned)
another twelve months passed, peace piece,
Monk, Coltrane, Nineteen-Feeeeefty-Seven maaaaan,
those were the years and the place,
but Reeves died of a heart attack, in Tuxedo Park,
and Evans, young and foolish, spectacled,
lucky to be him, popularised the sound of quartz.
Everything is Connected 