Jazz
That dance of disparate instruments,
Finding their way into rhythm
And sense
And music.
How unapologetic they are, their loudness
Their peacock beauty.
How they strut forward and say
“Here I am”
And the play begins,
Sometimes raucous, sometimes smooth
As the surface of an old late,
What it means to let yourself show up
Exactly as you are,
Hold you big hands out to the world,
And sing.
-Maya Stein
Jazz
There is music in your fingers
And I know this because I played the piano for a while
When I was in fourth grand
And when I quit it was because my teacher
Didn’t seem to understand that I could feel it.
I could feel it in my chest like the wings of a hummingbird,
Like the throaty sound of the mocking bird who sat on our roof the other night
Under a storm cloud,
Singing as if his very life depended on it,
Singing every song he’d ever heard.
- Amy Tingle Williamson
Autumn Journal 