a dream in jazz

Studying in Starbucks, watching

the pen scrawl on my cup blur

while Nat King Cole murmurs soft as powered

sugar             the world still is the same, you never change

it and rain glazes the umbrellas outside

as his piano dances me

onto an old trolley,

winding through Seattle

watching jazz drizzle

through a cloudy window, swinging

in half sleep

            so find yourself somebody

                        to love

men and women shuffle in

and ping

            ping ping

go their nickels in a tip jar

they shake off their tinted blue hats and adjust

the rose tinted feathers in their hair

            at last my love has come

                        home whispers the young bride

in her friend’s ear and a bent man rubs the check

in his pocket            the livin’ is easy

cars slide by, slow

under street light’s brick glow

and shops sell the latest

lamp shades, wood toys, mink coats

            je vois la vie en rose

the trolley rings to a stop for me

and i skate away on the lake

frozen between 3^rd and Pike Place

below salmon zip and badip in muted trumpet

bursts, then disappear beneath the bass line

            la mer
                        des reflets changeants
                        sous la pluie

a child on his father’s shoulders points

at the stars jiggling tambourines above           

and a man’s smoky saxophone song

spills into the street light

while the children giggle and clap for more
            they'll learn much more

                        than i'll never know

soon it will be a White Christmas and

the Old Speghetti Factory hauls in a giant tree

for everyone to hang up their prayers

and poems

i watch mine throb and glisten
in the firelight

            i'd tear the stars down from the sky

                        for you

says the old man who lends his arm

to his dozing wife

and they bob, his cane bouncing

into the night
if that isn't love

            it will have to do

shops close

doors lock

and the city hums into sleep

i sit alone on the trolley

watching the lights blinking, slinking

over the bridge, into the water

            the best is yet to come
and I wake

warm

from all this jazz

nostalgia

magic.