The River of Hidden Music

We’re at the nursing home, it’s Sunday
afternoon, musicians are scheduled
to appear, we’re excited, Mom and I.
Thirty or so old folks are wheeled
to tables in the sky-lit performance
room where staff have fastened balloons,
set out crackers and juice. Mom and I
are already watching the musicians –
relaxed, sophisticated, DC musical
royalty, super-fine, Ellingtonian.
They seem to carry with them,
in their cases, in their manner,
a river of hidden music
(the phrase comes to me! I’m excited).

A lovely, polished guitar emerges
from its case, twelve blues harps
are revealed, a mandolin! (for jazz?!)
an electric piano. An oh so cool oh so
mellow man about fifty is guitarist; he
tunes, first to himself, then to others
and “Mom,” I say, “This is going to be
some good music! This is going to be
some sophisticated D.C. jazz!”
Why not? We’re at the prestigious
Washington Home. And we’re off –
on Ellington’s “A-Train”!

        My mother
conducts, her arms and hands
flowing gracefully, regally through air.

And at another table, an old fella,
not so old when you look closer,
a man in his sixties who’s had a stroke –
seems to be flicking crumbs off his
right pant leg, but repetitively,
repetitively – until he adds left hand
to left leg and it’s suddenly clear –
he’s playing a drummer’s brass cymbals,
high hats, with brushes, delicate, delicate,
“ba-daddum-ba-da….”
And then, across the room from Mom,
still gracefully conducting, and me,
thinking now as I nod at the drummer,
There is a river of hidden music
flowing through our days…

A lady of seventy or so, in a wheel chair,
closes her eyes as she listens, sways her
body, smiles inwardly, opens her eyes,
goes into a showgirl’s chest-shimmy,
chest-shimmy, chest-shimmy, shake it
girl, shake it, shake it, cool, cool, cool.
She’s a musician, a pro, it’s her whole
body dancing, her eyes are wide open,
she’s scanning the crowd from that
abstract trance place musicians go –
she’s with the band, man!

There is a river of hidden music
flowing through our days!

There is no time
on the river of hidden music
flowing through our days!