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The cover of the 1961 Bill Evans Trio album Sunday at the Village Vanguard

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Plane to Eternity

Beautiful, sad poet
haggard and thin
dressed in the polyester suit
you bought at Sears with Philly Joe
Your brow is damp
You hide the pain in your side

Soon you will board a plane to Italy
Cosmic jet engine coursing rhythmically through
the noctilucent clouds

Play, play, play
Swing, swing, swing
Reggio di Calabria, Barcelona, Germany, Japan….

Always hoping for a good piano, maybe a 9-foot Baldwin grand
An active, engaged audience
A listening room to follow you
on your stream of conscious, those shimmering arpeggios
Your tender linguistics

Everyone who saw you those last few months in 1980
knew that it was the end
Everyone close to tears
Listening to your joyful defiance
as Mr. Death stood leaning
in the doorway of the Vanguard,
with a cigarette, tap, tap, tapping his metatarsal in time

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by Linda Werbner

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Discovery Amid the Notes

When I fall in love, I visit the music
of Bill “whisper fingers” Evans.
Rain releases from piano keys the joy
and discovery of love in a gentle
serenade of possibility, hope,
and self-discovery. His notes

fill the air with the grace of a quiet
snow storm covering the earth
with cool, elegant, blessed hope,
wed to sanctified touch promising
a future unknown, but filled with
what might be, and life becomes a prayer.

All becomes what might be, what awaits,
and the heart rediscovers how to sing Hallelujah.

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by Michael L. Newell

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Michael L. Newell lives on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. His most recent book of poems is Passage of a Heart.

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