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Inside the Village Vanguard, November, 2016

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To The Audience Members Who Chatted During The Recording Of Bill Evans Trio Live At The Village Vanguard, June 25, 1961

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Relax, I will never scold, don’t shush.
All music, like all moments, is soon lost.
It’s vocal birds like you and me who flash
in hopes of flying like light each night across
the years to learn to touch the foolish hearts
inside our hums, our laughs, our cigar smoke.
So continue, my judgment is at rest.
Perhaps later in the night it fired a spark—

music to accompany while we play roles—
did lonely Adam have a language to speak,
and are the rhythms of his speaking in a solo?
Have these notes always been inside our talk
and are you, my talking friends, now alight
in the music that mattered most that night?

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John Riley has published poetry in Mojave River Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Connotation Press, Dead Mule, Better Than Starbucks and many other journals and anthologies. He works in educational publishing part-time and is a full-time nanny to his granddaughter Byl.

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Listen to Bill Evans play “Some Other Time,” from The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961

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