“Dear Lord” – a poem by Russell Dupont

September 18th, 2026

Cover of the 1965 John Coltrane album Transition [Impulse!]

Dear Lord

At the kitchen island
where I work all day
Pandora has chosen
Coltrane’s Dear Lord
and his notes hover
over and around me,
somehow a reminder,
that if I was a believer,
I could go to heaven
. . . or to hell.

Nevertheless,
even for a non-believer,
there is something holy
in ‘Trane’s sheets of sounds,
riffs that invoke the wistful
and the melancholy,
like dreams drifting
over dark waters.

___

Russell Dupont, poet, artist, novelist, has published in the albatross, Spectrum, The I, For Poets Only, The Anthology of South Shore Poets, Re-Side, Oddball, Jerry Jazz Musician, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Rye Whiskey Review, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, the new post-literate, DADAKU, One Sentence, Verse-Virtual, Lothlorien Journal, Pick-Me-Up Poetry, Poetry Porch, Concrete Formalist Poetry and the Northern New England Review. He is the author of three novels: King & Train, Waiting for the Turk, Movin’ On; a collection of short stories, Norman Mailer Walks Into a Bar; four collections of poetry: Winter, 1948, Establishing Home Plate, Jazz at the Point and One Foot in Front of the Other.

Listen to the 1965 recording of John Coltrane performing his composition “Dear Lord,” with McCoy Tyner (piano); Jimmy Garrison (bass); and Elvin Jones (drums). [Universal Music Group]