Jazz Poems

SOLOING

My mother tells me she dreamed

of John Coltrane, a young Trane

playing his music with such joy

and contained energy and rage

she could not hold back her tears.

And sitting awake now, her hands

crossed in her lap, the tears start

in her blind eyes. The TV set

behind her is gray, expressionless.

It is late, the neighbors quiet,

even the city–Los Angeles–quiet.

I have driven for hours down 99,

>over the Grapevine into heaven

to be here. I place my left hand

on her shoulder, and she smiles.

What a world, a mother and son

finding solace in California

just where we told it would

be, among the palm trees and all-

night super markets pushing orange

back-lighted oranges at 2 A.M.

“He was alone,” she says, and does

not say, just as I am, “soloing.”

What a world, a great man half

her age comes to my mother

in sleep to give her the gift

of song, which–shaking the tears

away–she passes on to me, for now

I can hear the music of the world

in the silence and that word:

soloing. What a world–when I

arrived the great bowl of mountains

was hidden in a cloud of exhaust,

the sea spread out like a carpet

of oil, the roses I had bought

from Fresno browned on the seat

beside me, and I could have

turned back and lost the music.

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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