DJANGO

(For Django Reinhardt 1910-1953)

All roads of le jazz hot lead to this Roma,
raising the question of how many fingers
it takes to play guitar,

or eyes, as he couldn’t read music,
barely words, and not many

but he could strum the blood,
kickstart the heart, with
Grapelli’s see-saw on the strings,far from gypsy stereotypes
of a hundred weeping Hungarian violins,

instead putting you on the Hot Lick Express
where the click on the rails
is a furious picking of strings,
the band machine rolling along,
bridging the riffs,
sometimes almost over the clef,
as gypsy
as all musicians are gypsies,
wander the world
in search of their own
perfect sound.