VINTAGE INN, ASHLAND, OREGON (4/16/81)
(for The PJQ Quintet)
by Michael L. Newell
Trumpet and Voice roam together
Sax gusts above
Piano Keys
spill and tumble (a mountain creek
or lover filled with abandon) Love Her raps Drum
ice cubes swing
rattle
sway
floorboards dance
CRAZY
a cartoon
every marriage needs witnesses and we nod
clap our hands stomp our feet such noisy guests
a wonder we’re allowed to stay
silence tightens breathing
we wonder if more’s to come…
tipping the waiter we imagine
a collection for lovers
and grin foolishly
outside the night is filled
with cigarette smoke lightning
and Lithia Creek swirling over rocks
and wooden supports of the Vintage Inn
we sit on our car’s hood for hours
with friends
we pretend
we’re a traveling band our hands
shape imaginary notes
ah love love crazy love nothing quite like it
for igniting the blood you and I are muted trumpet
softly singing of night and day swirling sax celebrating
what is and is to come sensuous guitar and rippling piano
all suggestive of what could be all suggesting the night
is ours and the wind whispers of the hours to come
LIFE’S MUSIC
by Michael L. Newell
Arturo Sandoval’s trumpet mourns “The Windmills of Your Mind”
on a stereo, notes floating to the street below where an aged couple
of sixty or so slowly glide arm in arm through an early spring evening
that is livened by a cool breeze blowing her hair across his grizzled beard,
as they lightly rest head against head and smile at the elegiac music
that sings of what was and was lost, what might have been and wasn’t,
while they have overcome and live in quiet joy at what is and will be,
each day a duet of memory, hope, loss redeemed, and love that endures.
__________
Michael L. Newell, an expatriate English/Theatre teacher for twenty years, retired to the south-central Oregon coast in 2014. Among his published works are Traveling without Compass or Map (Bellowing Ark Press, 2006), A Long Time Traveling (Four-Sep Publications, 2004), Seeking Shelter (Four-Sep Publications, 2004), and A Stranger to the Land (Garden Street Press, 1997). He has loved jazz for over fifty years.
A great variety and a splendid collection of jazz
Gorgeous poem, Patricia! So much richness in so few words.
To bring from the lips to the ear or the fingers to the ear and into the body so much of life and love is such a fine thing that the poet and the musician have married here that all we can do that is celebrate and hallelujah.
I’m very happy to be part of such a fine collection. I particularly enjoyed Michael Newell’s ‘Vintage Inn ..’ and Lawrence Koumas’s lovely little anecdote.
This collection has too many good poems and poets to acknowledge every poem and every poet worthy of attention. I will, therefore, single out a handful of poets who moved me deeply. The list would include Gannon Daniels, Robert Nisbet, Susana Case, Dan Franch, Patricia Carragon, John Stupp, and Aurora Lewis. If I went back and reread all the poems for a fourth or fifth time, I would likely expand this list considerably. I tip my hat to all the fine artists in this collection, and I thank Joseph Maita for putting all these fine poems together in such an appealing way.
Michael,
I especially like the way the way the two settings, outside and inside the Inn in the first poem, as in these lines:
outside the night is filled
with cigarette smoke lightning
and Lithia Creek swirling over rocks
In the second poem, I hear the music playing in the background of the second poem.
I am pleased that I was able to participate in a poetry writing event which includes the deeply felt emotions of jazz music and love and its individual expressions in form and format. I will read these with great pleasure. This idea to showcase it on Valentines date was terrific.