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photo via Wikimedia Commons

Eubie Blake (date unknown)

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Eubie’s Hands

They stretch octaves
across the sheet music
and the decades
of “Charleston Rag”
fingers like twisted bent tree trunks–
remembered rivers of antiquity
flowing through his veins–

there’s about a million
of them
when he gets going–
playing good old shuffle along
white teeth ragtime
for broadway dicty uptown folks–
as he secretly with a left hand
as uniform as early morning chorus lines
tapping

sat in bemused silence
and ageless joy,
peeking over his glasses
with swollen tree trunk fingers
and currents of cerise creation that
slowly stripped the buffoon clown mask
varnish from America’s face
and painted a portrait of slow rising freedom,
hardly noticed over time,
that America can’t look away from
(although it tries)
much less ever diminish.

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Daniel Brown has loved jazz (and music in general) ever since he delved into his parents’ 78 collection as a child. He is a retired special education teacher who began writing as a senior. In addition to Jerry Jazz Musician, Daniel has most recently been published in The Ekphrastic Review and Poetic Sun Journal. His first poetry collection Family Portraits in Verse is forthcoming. He can be reached at [email protected]

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Listen to the 1969 recording of Eubie Blake playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” [Columbia]

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Click here for information about how to submit your poetry

Click here to read the Jerry Jazz Musician interview with Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom, authors of Eubie Blake: Rags, Rhythm, and Race

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