So What
Evening breezes dab the deck and
whisper warm greetings to my cheeks;
a faraway horse chortles over cool
standards of the Jimmy Cobb Quartet.
Jimmy passed away the other day.
He was ninety-one,
still a swinging drummer,
never a showboat,
didn’t do smack,
accompanied the greats
and was one of them.
At length the album ends;
just after, it’s a jam session in birdland:
robins chirp, larks warble,
blackbirds whistle. Frogs in the pond
thrum a cymbal rhythm;
like Cannonball, Miles, and ‘Trane
entering all at once,
a confident chickadee
pipes up “so what” right in tune,
in a key that’s kind of blue –
our turn, Jimmy, we’re remembering you.
First appeared in Cathexis Northwest Press, April 2021
