Miles Alive

There’s a video of Miles in his brown suede jacket tonguing his muted horn as he walks every inch of the stage. It is a study in energy. You get up to do this. You don’t know how to stay down. It must have been in Florida, the sky was clear and the sun bright, the crowd alternately hushed and letting go, the band behind him waiting for their cue and when he wanted something extra he walked back and told them with one hand making a sign that spoke clearly through the silence between sounds.

Walked all over, to the edge and around, until he could say later, I was poised on the edge of each piece of that floats out one note at a time, and all of it was there, on the lip of the bottomless air. Then all he hears is honeycomb, woman, he must taste what's between her legs. Sure, he'd like a taste of the other too, but he gorged himself on enough smack to kill him one day. He sees no need to die tomorrow. He doesn't have to buy a woman. He could swear he saw a lady with cornrows wave out there.

You don’t have time
between notes to smile,
you know her already,
she’s waiting for you.
She will stay for now.
The music is too rare.

There’s no going back.
Life can’t do tricks
like that. Your body
takes a charge from
her body, your horn
electric, how she shines.

(8 December 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander