Blown Away by “Blues” from Bish at the Bank

Even the earth dies sometimes

            when it is most alive.

            Walter Bishop Jr. slaying the keys, 

Harold Vick on tenor, driving the rain, carving it,

that rain that never reaches the oh-so-blue ground.

            I have asked of the wind, bent into it and through,

            if it would love me once and for maybe.

This is the land of the in-between, the many mists

in the midst of the moists of my mouth.

            Tonight it is Baltimore, but it could easily be

            Fort Wayne, Indiana, where the sound of all that is

and could be is again. Yes, this is 1966 and ’67. Yes,

there are birds in their mouths, many birds,

            even in 2024, which is why they don’t sing. 

            Bishop taking the keys as far south as north allows.

Vick blowin’ bread right out of heaven. Lou McIntosh’s bass

bringing down lightning into sound ground.

            Dick Berk’s cymbal crash calling thunder

            almost as loud as Blakey. The many limps and leaps,

the many ways of mouth, the way mouths burn off tonight

into moths as this night rain of sound batters against

            the glass, even when it doesn’t rain.

            This is music of the Far North, of the swampy South,

music of the East, say, as West, the sound of  love loving itself

despite the many fits of fists saying love won’t survive.

            Now the warmth of kerosene lamps lights the way

            from Baltimore into what could be and is.

I hear it over and again when Walter Bishop Jr. lays the keys,

slays them, when he says unto us, through them,

            what the world could be and is. Each touch,

            each finger tap, assures us, says he can move us

into this inside, this inside out of rain he keeps promising

will come no matter how thick the clouds. Tonight,

            Bish—again—at the Bank with this rain

            that rains upon us, into us and through,

even when it doesn’t reach the ground.