Sample Poetry by Mark Belair
From “Staying
In”
I imagine
I remember
drumming
with my dented sticks
in the air
above my bed
while on my back humming
John Coltrane’s
“A Love Supreme.”
I reach the end of “Acknowledgement,”
scat the bass solo into
the next movement,
then sing the exalted, soul-lifting melody of “Resolution”
when my clock-radio alarm buzzes.
I tap it
off with a stick.
Next to
the clock-radio sit my record player, padded headphones, and
a stack of jazz albums—Miles
Davis, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans.
On a wall across my bedroom
hang framed
photographs of jazz drummers:
Tony Williams, cool and intelligent, his drumsticks
blurred;
Art Blakey sitting straight up, sweat-beaded and grinning;
Max Roach,
brushes whispering across his snare drum, his head
turned thoughtfully to the
side;
and, surrounded by bright cymbals and dark tom-toms,
his brow knitted,
Coltrane’s drummer, Elvin Jones.
I look from one drummer to the next,
each
caught in a style-defining moment of musical glory.
Then I look back to my
clock-radio—5:45—
and, with a sigh, park my sticks.