Jazz, two Dylans, and Robert Frost

When my young green mind expanded to admit
Modern Jazz it must have sounded like Velcro
pulled apart but I only heard the Kenton and Ahmad
Jamal and MJQ and Errol Garner, it could be said I

swooned, and wanted more. Rock and roll still filled
the summer nights from the rolled down windows of
my Ford but only because jazz could not be dialled
and I loved it all, gospel too, and Elvis vied for saint

hood with the angels of the steamy night, fought for
his place by Maybelline, Chuck Berry’s outlaw song
that pushed our pedal to the floor, guitars and drums
our brain and heartbeat blood commanders thrusting

diving falling climbing flaming forward into what
we didn’t know but bring it on, we wanted more of
all of it, carried like a riptide toward it, then came
words, in combinations never heard, the Velcro

ripped again, to let it in, my mind drank deep when
Dylan spoke, Ginsberg howled, and Ferlinghetti led
by asking, and Robert Frost cathedralized it, magic
deep woods hush, bowed our heads inclined our ear

days and nights of deep discovery stir it in with sex
and drugs, add Joe Williams, Coltrane and dada art
and Vietnam, civil rights, that day in Dallas all the
horror yet to come, give me those Velcro days of

jazz, of Dylan, Frost and Maybelline. One wishes
to be stuck in time with Kerouac that road goes on
forever, stop and pick up Holden Caulfield maybe,
Charlie Parker, Billie too, drive forever never end

Guinotte Wise writes and welds on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and not much acclaim. Three more books since, the latest a collection of poetry titled Scattered Cranes, published by Pski’s Porch, 2017. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it.