Anita today

Some reflections on a favourite American jazz singer coupled with the drive home from work...

_________

Cloud banks won't give an inch, weary of my jolts,

and there on the way home (like the first time) comes up a life— hers!

Cooing to a mike may be too much for a lady who's high. Sluggish weeks arrayed in a row look like streaks on the old old old— (funny that mood in me which wishes a life turn into O'Day and a boozy grin)

A face, hers, Anita's along the road coming to a blue lake is what this is, and with it birds, too, looking like cool asphodels in their own feathery and white and ornamental gloves-- like hers

Sure she'd felt what it was to sing the predawn and a hat spiraling like one. Driving up the road in some ridiculously long and rising way is all it took for me to see O’Day:

the image comprised, in fact, of a trilogy of things things things—like bird, hat & lake—and a cool girl who's high as the moon, all the way home.

(2011)