Michael L. Newell

all night I dreamed I was lost
at sea in an alley on a battlefield
in a junkyard in a waterfront dive

when suddenly I found a room
filled with music where fear
was eased where losses were mourned

swollen with spring rain
creek sings in crooked path round
boulders trees down mountainside

a song wild as Coltrane solo

The wind blew all afternoon,
blue my mood, moody the blues
on the box, bleak and blue when
Robert Johnson took over the airwaves;
the wind blew louder and then

The slow tumble of snow past
my partially open window
recalls the year in Amman
I sat for hours watching
a bleak whiteness deepen

all through the abandoned farm fields
surrounding my apartment
while the cool sound of Miles
gave shape and form to my grief
thousands of miles from

IT WAS ALL ABOUT SAX

when man said the wind man
blowing when does the wind do
its voodoo upon leaf and bud

bloody the morning the storm
warning it is on its way its windy
winding wickedly roaring crack

thunder and snap way paving
the air for

swing swagger and sway
she bop she bop drift those feet
first one way then another
swirl round and round and back again
light up the floor fly up above

a leaf flutters rises and glides
to its rest a blues note
in autumn as a slow rain falls

at the end of a windy day
and a scattering of distant
voices creates

A marsh harrier soars above the Norfolk broads
circling higher and higher

rather like a Gillespie trumpet solo that rises and rises
to dizzying heights of pitch and volume

eventually the bird slides behind billowing clouds
and vanishes into distance

so the trumpet reaches and

Rikki spun, spun
and leaped, twirled
and dipped,
                 James Brown
on the jukebox, the small
bar filled with smoke, clinking
glasses, Filipinas in short dresses,
and a couple dozen G.I.’s profane,
obscene, and three-quarters in the bag;

Rikki, half-black, half-
Filipino, ten, living
in alleys and under bars, danced

HARRY AT THE PARK

Today the trees
in constant motion, you’ve
seen the same thing
at cocktail parties, in restaurants,
on the beach, bodies
moving to the breath
of the world, do wop,