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Jjb91, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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To My Jazzed Grandmother
-After John Coltrane
The evening burns,
riffs… clinking glasses
dance to …what is
not ..there.
My finger travels along the old
family photograph, 33 stern faces.
Forest cats in clan den, spotted,
camouflaged. Before I was born.
Who are they? No one knows.
Saxophone shaman starts to blow.
No knowing what will come next.
Pressures of breath and longing.
Territories breached,
lives immolated by wildfire hate.
Who was murdered?
Who survived the war?
Grandmother, where are you?
In tipsy darkness
he blows you into sound,
takes you through the journey:
breaching the underwaters,
thrusting you upward,
going under, rising again.
His whale mind cycles endlessly,
splashing honks and stratospheric
flashes through the void.
He fertilizes loss—
in nightlong solos, fingers jabbing
at an unbearable edge—
to pull people out of the fire,
to bring you back,
crash the horizon,
set himself free.
Stop-time, spliced counterpoint,
my voice against yours.
Inside his horn, we hang together.
You long for me to be your return.
I kneel before you,
made from you . . .
But it is not you, Grandmother.
I am here!
I was not there!
Shimmer … of… cymbals
memory’s… flare
Auschwitz
… Buchenwald
… … Birmingham
..Watts.
He takes it out . . .
then raises his horn again.
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Listen to Anita Lerek read her poem
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Dec 9, 2024 marked the 60th anniversary of the recording of A Love Supreme by John Coltrane. This album was considered a masterpiece and a cultural milestone. This album in today’s conflicted times offers us both a mirror to past and present conflicts and also a rhapsodic pause for reflection.
The poet wishes to thank Marianne Hirsch for her thoughts in The Generation of Postmemory.
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Anita Lerek is an age activist and poet. She was nominated for Best of the Net, 2022, and is author of chapbook, Of History and Being (2019). Her passion for jazz leads her to frequently frame issues through the musical lens. She resides in Toronto, Canada.
Visit Anita on Facebook by clicking here.
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Listen to the 1964 recording of John Coltrane performing “Acknowledgement,” from his album A Love Supreme, with McCoy Tyner (piano); Jimmy Garrison (bass); and Elvin Jones (drums). [Universal Music Group]
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