This is one I knew I needed to come back to...the memory of the person about whom I wrote this has faded, but the essence of what this poem represents is still fresh today... how fresh it seems now with the is being what it is... even then, the end was always seeming to justify the means... do we give up comfort in to grow with the possibilities of the sometimes messy unknown... I don't know, I've thought always the poem answered that in a way that I found acceptable.

After Coltrane.
I just want to talk about you,
Said Coltrane to this evening,
The same where we have not met
And I am miles down roads
Which you have not seen
Nor heard this same absence
Which neither stars nor jazzmen
Can tell you how to fill.
And how their music stops between
Breaths and taps on the snare
For moments while I write, waiting
And chaos even from their lips
Is sweating and uncertain but carrying
Each crescendo and major lift,
Into sharp valleys where the horns say, move:
Tell her how you talk to her even when
Her sweat and smell can't soak
Your blankets, even when my music
Drifts into your walls after she has whimpered
Through your kisses and you have strained
To feel more like each other, have sought
Out the fallen vibe at the end of the boom
Where the boys all clap and you nod
Your head at their praise; but the back
Stage is lonely when you leave
on the plane next morning and she's not waiting
at the hotel room in a robe or an after
dinner gown with a glass of ice.
Tell her how the cab man can't give
You fare for her place and how you frown
When he pulls up at a club so full of late
Niters, clicking their ice and smiling
Broad out of their wet tongues and you can't
Get the literary crowd to talk about art
And how she pauses when she's seen the light
Tickling off umbrellas, through the leaves;
Off the awnings of the café where you kiss
Her neck and laugh like when you watched
The trains through the windshield, the mist
Forming after you took her heavy among the evergreens
While Cannonball's horns lit up the dash
And the whole gig being apocryphal
Like all endings of meanings are:
The same as forgetting to mention
Just how much you want to talk about her
With the evening, and every stranger reminds you
That they don't know you, they don't know about jazz
Or how you can read the omniscient stars.
I'm sure she's a wonderful girl, the evening said
Uncomfortably and if I were young like you
And knew your girl, I'd put down my books
And papers, and get back to the static of her nearness
I'd forget your homage to miles and jazz
And studying your art of reading the night sky
I'd get back to that place of her first music,
Just to tell her how much you want to talk about her