Vague Legacy

for Nick King


As is the way with history,
I have heard about you from someone else
and have since surely augmented those words
with my imagining. So, forgive me
if you don't recognize yourself
in this poem. Your son
Steve placed these seeds of you in my mind
in a past before we were friends,
but the scene remains unfaded.

As I recall the story, Alex had come for a holiday dinner
and you told him he must first play
a song on the piano,
as though this was a challenge you used
for entering the space of hospitality,
regardless of the fact that Alex couldn't play piano.
The implication being
that any being that could feed itself
could deal with enough of the 88 keys
to win entry to the feast. In my imagining,
you sat in a comfortable chair
well dressed but casual
working the rhythm of a martini
as you studied the guest absorb your request--
watching Alex hear, comprehend, puzzle, weigh
and then accept.

And this, perhaps, was the Song of Self-Examination
you genuinely desired to witness: the dramatic event
of an individual meeting something unexpected
and deciding to play it.

While I hate golf, I love this aspect of the game.

And, Alex did accept,
and proceeded to play
using a pair of oranges he plucked from a bowl of holiday fruit.
And in my mind,
it was a marvelous piece of percussive angularity
in a Thelonious Monk mode.
Building from a toying game
into a genuine vehicle of emotion,
Alex and the room listened as intently as Glenn Gould
at each incoming sound,
at each unexpected turn of form,
at each question of legitimacy and contempt.
He hunched over the black and white buttons
as the oranges bounced from tone to tone
just off the ends of his charcoal tweed sleeves.

And, when Steve told me this story--
probably to prove some point regarding ontology--
I dreamed myself into it as a future, halfway
hoping to one day be given the same challenge.
And, here, some decade-and-a-half after,
I must say that what's become my love for improvised music
began with that spark. Honestly. Looking back, I recall
beginning to play in earnest
(if such a thing is even possible)
because there seemed to be some need
to nurture a skill in embracing possibilities,
to be ready for a welcome that could require
an improvised offering of sound.

And, thus, in tribute in a future in a house I imagine,
there will always be a bowl of oranges atop the piano.



by jerry gordon
december, 2008