Jacqui

Source: Abandoned Turnpike

Clifford Brown died in 1956 at the age of 25. You can read a 1961 Downbeat piece about him here, listen to "Jacqui" here.  There really are abandoned tunnels at Ray's Hill, Laurel Hill, and Sideling Hill, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, at the above site and here.

Jacqui


Snared by wind & the sunset’s sidelong glare,
unspooled tape, a smashed cassette
flutters on the guardrail,

caught
between decoration & garbage, 
once fled now unsure which way to turn.

On the road you gather only this kind of silence.
Beside me the roadcut sluices tears
& barns

pierced
and collapsed, ambitionless for themselves
but inside the swallows listen for the unmeant

parting, goodbyes never knowingly the last –
thanks muttered into the turnpike
basket.

They live
on this, on the haze of misdirection
and outright lies swarming above the roadway,

as bats feed on the night’s disguising radio static.
In last defense I rummage up
a tape

Clifford Brown
 & Harold Land stroll out:
"Jacqui," all loose-limbed loping grace. How could

anyone speak so clearly with a trumpet
at his mouth, his breath inflating
the noumenon --

this is how
spirit speaks through body.
I nod & would close my eyes but think of

Brownie, Nancy, Richie Powell all dead:
a nighttime carwreck not far up
this very road,

whose tunnels
 like tunes left unwritten sing:
Sideling, Tuscarora, Laurel Hill,

to name a road from Delaware to the stars.
Where we headed next he whispers
to Richie,

each night
asks again into this crackling loop,
the endless gigs, going to sleep believing

dawn will come when the tape starts up again,
always the same, always different
in ways

we live,
we survive to understand: to know,
or remember, a kiss goodnight to a bedstand photo,

the pull of something gathering out there insistent
as the call from Max’s pressroll across
a tight-wound snare.