Thelonious Monk on a Subway
I met Monk
on a subway, coming through the tunnel.
His words fell out be-
tween thick beard hairs,
then lumbered toward me, paused and sighed.
When the train jerked, his long
fingers reached out,
touched my pale shoulder:
he wore a rust brown coat.
Intervals rode
the track with us: E-flat, D,
C and D. Harmonious fifths, and mismatched chords.
He explained that the melodies
were dots
his hands wanted to connect.
I didn’t understand
so he invited me to his home.
We emerged from underground and
walked. Step, step, stop
over thin tones of San Juan Hill. The sun moved closer.
Step, pause,
step. He smiled
that slow spreading smile,
shook hands with a man
he knew, mumbled
and moved on.
Step, step.
On West Sixty-Third, he found his door,
removed his hat,
and knocked.
Nellie took his hat.
Monk’s fingers lipped
the white keys, unlocked black ones.
He tapped,
crossed and banged again,
rolled his ring into place.
Evolving patterns
un-
clenched in a dance of abrupt
imagination, infinite extrusion.
Music didn’t pour out,
didn’t puddle.
He wrung it
from his palms, revived it, gathered it in again and
played for hours –
“Round Midnight” and “Blue Monk,” the angles
of lines
merging
until my head was full of squares
and curves,
the truth of spheres.
He drew silence on that piano
in his kitchen
until the sun came up.
I drank another cup of tea
and left through the small door
to the city, the gray-
green emerging light
the same as any other day, but
the corners of his melodies
kept opening and closing,
making infinite space
in the chunky dankness of the swilled avenue.
