by Gordon Linnell

ON GREEN DOLPHIN STREET

Chicago night, rain cascading

Drenching, chilling the jazz fan

Resolute he strides, needing his music tonight

Needing Cannonball to lift his cares

To ease him from the humdrum

His fedora pulled forward, raincoat fastened high

As raindrops ricochet from glistering sidewalks

Two blocks more - then Bank Street

The sign awaits, welcoming

A beacon in the dismal night

The dolphin in green neon juts out from the wall

 Bank Street; the name's not used by jazzmen

They say Green Dolphin Street

It's always Green Dolphin Street

He's there now, hat and coat removed, settled in his corner

Sipping Jack Daniel's which warms and kicks

And Julian Adderley, esquire, alias Cannonball,

Merlin of the alto sax, begins to weave his magic

Swinging, crackling, effervescing,  coruscating

Ballad-caressing. tender, bewitching,

This Bird- reincarnation?

Unfair! Cannon is cannon and nobody else

Though Parker's ghost hovers close by

And the jazz fan's soul is filled with hope

Tensions dissipated, anxieties melted

For two liberating hours

On Green Dolphin Street

by Roger Taber

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

Poets have strived to catch me;
But how to capture a lark's song
bursting on the ear with mere
simile, metaphor, rhyme…
or convey a rousing waltz in time
to the rhythm of a spring breeze
playing for the coming again
of all things bright and beautiful,
all creatures, great and small?

Painters have strived to catch me;
But how to capture the blue of a sky
on a summer's day, or its hues
of red and gold at the sun's setting
on a glorious reawakening
to the beauty of life, for all its ups
and downs, treasures lost and found,
hopes dashed, sure to be recovered
if only we look long and hard?

Musicians claim to have caught me
in an embrace of song whose beauty
must surely equal the sweet lay
of a nightingale at the closing of a day
seen all that's best in Man and Beast,
the worst forgotten, let fade away
like blood stains in a weeping sky
spelling out the names of those
among us sure to die?

Dearer by far than all we own
is Love's setting, not its stone



Copyright R. N. Taber 2003

Magpie for clouds

Like a silver coin in the grass

Poppies dotted on the verge

An old tree proud and true

Pulling the eye across the fields

Over the hedges a steeple villages away

What draws the clouds to me?

Like a magpie to the glint

Like a pin to a magnet

What controls the clouds

That badger me?

It's not the wind for sure

That tickles the spider's work

And dances with the leaves

No something else crushes me

Darkens all I see

Something else drags the clouds

Overhead to me

Shuts out my sun, moon and stars

And lets me peek beyond sometimes

Tantalisingly

Something else presses down 

Like the bull in the round

Stamps hard on me

Rains down on me

Flattens my dreams

Like the shiny pebbles

That sink without a trace

Or the fickle fish

that swim away

I'm left behind

to ponder why

These clouds bother me

A Christmas poem from Roger Taber

A FEELING FOR CHRISTMAS

Once
I found a Christmas tree
discarded in the street,
some of its branches cut away,
the rest looking shabby (to
say the least) needles already
turning shades of brown
like crumbs of toast, a sorry
specimen indeed that few
passers-by would have spared
a glance - but something
in me responded to that tree,
so I bent down, picked
it up, took it home, placed it
in a tub of earth and recall
thinking how good it was to
restore a sense of dignity
to the spirit of a sad little tree
which, surely, would die
but not without playing a part
of sorts in Christmas, even
with someone like me, hardly
the smiling face of festivity!
I found two dusty baubles, some
tinsel and a lopsided star.
It seemed to me the little tree
took on an air of triumph,
celebration, things I'd preferred
to forget at this time of year.
By the 25th it had taken root,
a sight for sore eyes indeed,
one I felt a need to share, with
such joy and pride I hadn't
experienced before, not like this
sense of - Christmas?


Copyright R. N. Taber 2003