White Dinner Jackets, Black Bow Ties

White Dinner Jackets, Black Bow Ties

by Rachel R. Baum
Saratoga Springs, NY

you stopped playing long ago
without an audience, what is music anyway
notes meant to be shared
are just sound waves careening in a vacuum

three rows of musicians
white dinner jackets, black bow ties,
a Girl singer and a Band leader
….and His Orchestra a draped satin flourish

once, you showed me how to moisten the reed
like a communion wafer, on the tongue
how to cradle the saxophone’s girth
cumbersome as a sleepy toddler

but you had no patience, cadence and chords
as alien to me as Gillespie and Goodman
so you laid the alto sax and A-flat clarinet
to rest in their peeling leather cases

a brief spark, electrons crackling into air
your jazzy whistle came home after work
lost to wind and time, fading,
like satellite transmissions, like memory.