Dear fellow worker,

I hear the tenor saxaphone. It is playing the life span of a swift piece of driftwood in a stream gliding past slippery rocks worn smooth by melting Bitteroot Valley snow. This icy music is purifying the blood in my veins which courses softly with the brushed snare of her heart's smoky possibilities.

I hear the warmth of the upright piano descending chromatically like the sigh of a bare leg dangling off the side of a tousled bed.

I hear the vibraphone and it is syrupy sweet and dizzy with spilled perfume. I hear mallots pummelling the soft skin along a woman's spine. She's lying on her stomach now, tilting a glass of white wine occasionally into her absent-minded lips, her legs bent upward at the knees, swaying like slender wild flowers in a breeze, her feet playing with each other, fondling, minds of their own.

The muted trumpet tosses us a melody thorny into the subconsious like a long-stemmed Margo rose, pricking distant memories which could be painful if pressed for detail, leaving bloody fingerprints. We pull off the petals a few at a time and toss them into the warm bathwater of the upright bass solo that bows foamy over our feet.

Now the saxaphone is back, angry and bored with the boundaries of this world.

It is all over the place, a needling child trying to get her hands in the pockets of the candy God. It is the sound of someone wrestling out of a straightjacket, while running along the edge of ocean cliffs. A bird beating his wings against the roof of her cage.

Ah, now this is more like it, she whispers, sitting back and crossing her legs. She's fully clothed, but she just doesn't care anymore about behaving the way a lady supposedly should. She's freer than that. More spontaneous and child-like. Her head rolls back and her eyes close.

And this is why we pay the rent money to hear a good jazz combo. When she walks out into the night in the wee hours of the morning, there is a new air about her and she's pulling on my arm as if every dark alley is calling her name.

You have my gratitude,

L. St. Jerome

. . .

copyright 2000, Linford Detweiler