STEAL AWAY

 

STEAL AWAY*

for Tom Moore III

There’s the list of memories

before me on my lap

and I’ll toss out a few

on your birthday weekend:

music, books, and stones

among them, that easy smile

before friends. Here:

Garden poems, Edna St. Vincent Millay,

Jeff bridges. That hike with our dogs

into the Goat Rocks, the two of us.

But for the family, Lisa

and the kids, this,

this black and white thing--

Hank Jones and Charlie Haden.

Black hands on the keyboard,

Charlie Haden’s stand-up country bass,

playing spirituals together.

How could anyone know, Tom,

those gospel sounds strumming

sorrow into joy could be foundational?

Bones in Hank Jones’ fingers riddled

with disease might break in mid-chord.

It’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

You gave me that song, Tom.

And one year you gave me quartz,

size of a fist, translucent, white.

The next year, a piece of obsidian,

shiny arrowhead black glass.

Black and white. The Chinese boatman

on the Yellow Sea. Song, poem, stone,

sustain one’s practice. Quartz, obsidian,

black and white, side by side

in a bonsai pot, where I place this love,

time-treasured. One side to the other,

everyday’s garden walk, there you are

coming up in a song.

*Steal Away: Spirituals, Hymns and Folk Songs, by Charlie Haden & Hank Jones, 1994. A gift from Tom Moore.

Jim Bodeen

29 January 2023