From the wonderful Chicago poet Nina Corwin:
Reflections of a Side Man
- for Tom Harrell
Where do you go?
Where do you go when you swing
that solo none too sane?
That flugelhorn makes notes fall like rain
those sweet contortions descending
from the brain
of a Mad Hatter of sorts,
so far beyond mending.
Where do you go?
Over misbegotten rainbows
where few can follow,
turning figures so fantastic
when you blow they seem to just
float in from Never Never Land,
fingers flying to beat the band
as you head off stratospheric
on circuitous routes
that take you through riffs
nearly missing the mark.
Hear you coaxing those quirks
as if they were the song
Where do you go?
You've been out there so long
I could swear you were playing to Satan's changes
there for a measure or two.
Like the melody took a wrong turn
or stumbled through the rubble
of some twilight zone of deconstruction.
Where do you go
when you blow that solo none too sane?
Is that tune you hear
a roadmap of your brain?
Do you follow some cynical piper
to the lip of the moon?
And when your solo
swings an orbit so elliptical
it might never get back
to the starting refrain,
where do you go?
But we'll keep the beat for you, brother
like a landing pad
those sweet same changes
till they bring you home.
Like the way your momma sang
those lilting lullaby's
to a bedtime sky.
And listen: for the honeymoon in the chorus
where melody and baseline coincide
till they mingle with the cymbals
in the rhythm of a hellified coitus.
Where do you go?
I want to hear what you hear,
trumpet player,
see what you see.
Can you take me with you, Mad Hatter,
can I bring you on home?
