b.z. niditch | winter blues

Picasso | Accordionist

WINTER BLUES

Today’s cloudy sky
will not be missed
in a sorry shade
of black and blues
playing the alto sax
in adolescence
outside the Savoy club
when Arctic air
is quietly smuggled in
from Canada
yet mother nature
cannot freeze me
in the lifeless rhythm
of snow into ice
here on an abstract poet’s
breathless hour
my transfigured tone
gives me an epiphany
as music contrasts
with the snow trying
to unhinge my breadth,
yet what saves me
tonight
from the cold frenzy
is having once glanced
at Picasso’s “Accordionist”
when my life blood colors
in pictorial figurines
again comes alive,
and my chilled sax
exposed as this palette
with my fresh croissant
is killed off waiting for
the Savoy to open
for a time with Mingus,
and meeting a guy
who actually heard
Henry Webb,
the king of the Savoy
drumming here
at this blind window
staring back at him
among a sponged fog
I’m more hungry for jazz
and this sax than anything
from this Beat poet’s
musical scales and stave
to blow everything
away as woodwinds
with nameless riffs
on underground notes
to play the Blues.

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