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photo by Aaron Burden via Unsplash
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Forgotten Poems Fly Here and There
………….The eagle flies on Friday
………….Saturday I go out to play
……………………..from “Call It Stormy Monday”, T-Bone Walker (1947)
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Forgotten poems fly here and there
like birds that circle aimlessly
high in the thin and chilly air
till, willy-nilly, they come down
almost anywhere— I’ve found them
scattered about in potter’s fields,
rhymes askew and metrics broken,
seen the ones that fly on Friday
beside the eagle in that blues,
to land in factory-row saloons,
ink bleeding into spilled bourbon,
on lost November afternoons.
Meantime, across town at his desk,
the laureate of no-place scribbles
a sonnet on a sheet of stock
which then falls through the furnace grate
to gather dust, beneath the floor.
Nary a soul will read this stuff
nor do they, on the other hand,
read Li Po, Yeats or Dickenson.
Forgotten poems go where they will,
like little origami swans,
set gently down on streams and ponds
or, for a lark, tossed up among
the crows in noisy rookeries
that lie along the railroad lines
in canopies of ancient trees
that have been there time out of mind.
What happens when your dog goes blind?
Who will then guide him, guiding you?
White-caned quatrains fly with the dove
whose perfect rhyme is always love.
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Joel Glickman taught music including jazz history and the jazz band at Northland College, Ashland Wisconsin, from 1974 until retirement in 2017, where he has resumed teaching about jazz again, part time. He has written and published poetry over a wide range of subjects. Primarily a classical clarinetist and folk singer-song writer and banjo player, his jazz and saxophone skills lag behind these. He resides in Ashland with wife Susan and their Bichon, Madeline.
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Listen to T-Bone Walker perform “Call it Stormy Monday,” with Walker (guitar and vocals); Lloyd Glenn (piano); Billy Hadnott (bass); and Oscar Bradley (drums). [Rhino/Atlantic]
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