IFrom KC to 52nd St.smoke and shades street signs gash neon in the dark, Parker riffs and calls forth feather and dusk.
IIThe apple tree spatpink blossoms. There I sat, breathlessSpring. What was I,thorn,blossom,fruit?
III“Try this,” said Bird divinghigh off the melodic cliff, Europe in shards and America, dizzy with victory, weary of the mother tongue.
IVThe way my father played the music I knew they were royalty,Louis, Ella, warming himself in the sunlight of their deftness,and how easily they lit from note to note knowing they would arrive.But he rarely mentioned Bird.
VFlame to mothand feathers mottled in the rainridesthe train, beat.At every seat,the brilliant poppies press against the glass.
VIA trapped bird will beat its wingsagainst the pane, thinking the skyis a quickened breath away. Some confoundedby the magnitude of their confinement,wheel about themselves — others, fall to earth in blue and syncopated arabesques.
VIIGenius is a pitiless demon,ginned from a cotton field where blooms of bondage grow, and trees noosed with wisteria are drunkon their own perfume. Out of somewhere,Harlem whispers jagged promises of glory.
VIIIThe death of the last passenger pigeon left a holebetween my teeth that made me whistle when I spoke.Life does not move in circles, but stumbles, swoops, sashays,Stops.
IXHow did this many–stranded music arisefrom broken soil, the shackledtoil of people without words, strunglike black beads between the rowsof thornéd blossoms, white as snow?
XThin air,hollow bones.Reeds clattle in the riverand the ibis struts on muddied feet,cornets a few bars and sleeps.
XIAt family reunions, they would tell the rooster story,my father and his siblings, recalling cockscomb and claws,each dawn assertion of his I-ness, the yardbird king.
XIIWhen my father died, he circled onceabove Cincinnati, the Brent Spence bridge, liton the bare branch of the apple tree, and took his leave,joining a host of souls winging their way back home.
XIIIAt dusk they would arrivewith gifts of brass and reed and throaty wizardry and quick tongues bearing what had not yet been said, or sungand it was always evening.