On Mellowness and Flight

Ever wake up at dawn to the sound of a bird chirping outside your window?  This morning was one of those times for me.  My eyes opened slowly and I heard a bird chirping.  I thought about what a nice moment that was.  And for some reason, my next thought was a line I had heard somewhere before.  The line was:  ever heard Bird flap his wings?  That line echoed in my head, and then I thought:  Okay.  Where have I heard it before?  Where?  Then I remembered.  It was a line—actually two lines—from a poem about saxophone player Charlie Parker, who was also called Bird by his legions of fans.                                                                                                                                                     
I knew I had a copy of the poem somewhere; because I’d used it with several other poems in Conversations about Jazz Poetry, a public event I conducted last year.   Remembering where I’d filed those poems, I decided that a poem whose lines echoed in my head after I awoke to the sound of a bird chirping deserved to be pulled out of file and reread.  But I would pull it out and reread it later, after I poured my morning cup of coffee.

 

With my cup of coffee in one hand, I located my hardcopy file of jazz poems with the other hand and pulled out the poem, “Mellowness & Flight,” by George Barlow.  The line that had haunted me in a good way at dawn turned out to be two lines.

ever heard Bird/ flap his wings

The 19-line "Mellowness & Flight" begins and ends with the two (italicized) lines shown above.  And the poem compares Charlie Parker to: 

a bright blackbird / slicing blue sky

The poem asks us if we've ever heard Charlie Parker play the standard songs  "Laura," "Lover Man," and "Just Friends," and taken in Parker's mellowness.  The poet uses the bird-in-flight metaphor to describe Parker and asks us if we’ve ever felt like we were flying with him (Bird). 

Drinking my morning cup of coffee and rereading “Mellowness & Flight” have put me in a mellow mood.  Thoughts the poem have inspired in me have gotten my day off to a flying start.