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photo by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Erroll Garner, c. 1946-1948
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The Music Mind’s Make
I rise, change the sheets on the bed
that used to be in Mother’s basement.
I step into her body or she into mine,
attempt to line the blanket and spread
evenly, to tuck in the ends the “military”
square-corner-way and then, I remember
Mother doing chores to jazz, blues
and big band jams so, I go to YouTube,
click on Erroll Garner, Live 63’ & 64’ Jazz
Icons DVD and I listen and listen and listen.
I don’t know the tunes, but do know the moans,
the groans, and finger flitterings of the man
who can’t read music. I watch as this giant
of my past becomes an extension of the baby grand.
When he half-stands, takes a bow, I exclaim, wow!
Under his tuxedo tails are stacked telephone books
revealing this master’s small stature.
I imagine my digits making music as they type,
or write with a pen on paper. A scritch of the nib
becomes a riff, an erasure resounds cross-rhythms,
the rapid ranting keyboard write—a swing band
swings, jumps and jives. I imagine music inside
my body coming out in every move I make.
The heart beats a steady 4/4 tempo, bones creak
tambourine tinklings, and my lungs’ bellows blow horns.
Oh, the music I would ooze if only I could take
the pianissimo of a bird’s wings as it flies,
the vibrato of a leaf jitterbugging as winds whip
branches and the gentle sneezes opening buds
make when they send out blossoms of pollen,
and play them into a poetic masterpiece.
I fold myself into Erroll’s world and imagine
the sprinkling of rain and my brain, a contrapuntal.
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Catherine Perkins, resident of Lexington, KY, has poems printed in numerous locally published anthologies. She wrote for the Jazz Arts Foundation blog, briefly, in 2016. Catherine was brought up listening to jazz, blues and swing and owes her deep connection to music and the arts to her mother, Antoinette.
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Watch a video snippet of an Erroll Garner performance from 1963
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