POEM: "Over The Mountains, Blow!"

Over The Mountains, Blow!
  
                                              for Philip Levine                                               

                           "Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."
                             from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Charlie Parker, Bird, a cautious bird
though he was a man, with a tail of music

It is sixty years away. The updraught here
waiting for more filler, killer of time...

“…they later wrote, all that rising passion
a footnote to others,” wrote Philip Levine

(I wouldn’t feel bad either. A better man than me
walked him up the stairs, pulled off his boots)

That’s the problem. Rise, to hear it magnificent
then come back down, to find you can't play it

Lover Man, where did you go

   high as an Asian goose?

The others bang their pots and pans
to make sure some birds will never land

Certain flights will have nervous captains
and instruments lie at the bottom of the sea

After the Dial recordings and the gigs, Bird 
took his few dollars and didn't fly to NYC

(Probably a more dangerous place to score
but California had sunshine and oranges)

I lay me down, this could be my last one too
I would also have a memory more than a dream

A seagull decides it wanders off the sand
then the road decides it lands in feathers.


© 2015 Rob Schackne