Jake gone eight months, 
even the honeysuckle estranges, 
pleats the afternoon. 

Everything is unfinished, momentary. 
It’s not anyone’s fault, I know. 

We’re all strangers to the middle of the noise.

On Live at Birdland, Coltrane’s Alabama drops 
the snare by the church parking lot at 2:42. 

That’s where the ghosts are, 
waiting with the floor tom, 
a tousled mess of glyph and syllable. 

Child of gravity, stranger to the ground. 
Come down and help me rise.