Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DRUMMER YOUNG, by RICHARD FROST


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DRUMMER YOUNG, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Baltimore, forty years ago- / west fayette, a corner bar
Subject(s): Baltimore, Maryland; Music & Musicians


Baltimore, forty years ago --
West Fayette, a corner bar
and my quintet: piano, tenor,
trumpet, bass, drums. I parked
down the street, beside a churchyard,

an iron fence, a tipped stone,
and Poe's grave. Every night
I greeted him, and in five hours
said good night to the bones, the shadows,
the low, searching trees. The jazz

went unrecorded, and the man
with the big forehead and baggy eyes
was long since chewed to nothing; yet
I said good night, and in my brain
my music swirled companionably

with the cicadas fiddling in the shadows.
Cold sober, I might have seen a ghost
fenced in the humid summer night,
but here was only the woven mix
of images, the holy noise

of what I believed was poetry --
the shadows, the leaves, the tipped stone,
the empty vase, my own steps,
the car door, and what seemed
almost there, another fine morning.







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