At the Blue Note

Sometimes in the heat of the snow

you want to cry out

for pleasure or pain like a bell.

And you wind up holding each other,

listening to the in-between

despite the abyss at the edge of the table.

Hell. Mulgrew Miller plays like a big

bad spider, hands on fire, the piano

trembling like crystal,

the taste and smell of a forest under water.

The bartender made us a drink

with butterfly wings and electric wire.

Bitter cold outside, big silence,

a whale growing inside us.