QUIET DEPARTURES: A POEM FROM EBERHARD WEBER'S JAZZ

Today the three-disc box set of Eberhard Weber's Colours albums Yellow Fields, Silent Feet, Little Movements) arrived; my sister's birthday gift to me reached me on siblings day, a contrivance which appears to have arisen in the interweb of its own time-wasting accord. By a not very eerie coincidence (as I ordered the disc myself) I'd been reworking another of the poems I'd done inspired by tunes from jazz records, Weber's Quiet Departures, which comes off his 1979 album Fluid Rustle, the same time frame as when I saw Colours at the Round House in Camden.

I can't figure out when I first jotted down a few lines based on it, but I think I drew a little on New Haven's Union Station. I know I did a big revision after reading Steve Hamilton's novel Let It Burn -- but this version has been rewritten almost completely, and it heads in a different direction than where I thought it was going in either of those first two incarnations.....and I took a final walk around it this afternoon while Charlie Mariano worked out on Yellow Fields in the background.

QUIET DEPARTURES

                               (for Eberhard Weber & Steve Hamilton)

This building used to be

A station. Now shattered

Mosaic of faded brick

Broken glass, disjointed

Frames. It is still. Life

Clings to ruin, frozen

Boards with stops unmade,

Dead shadow whistles,

Lost scents of steam, echoes

Of hydraulic brakes over

Farewell tears. We hear

Noises of departure fill

The concourse with silence.

It is the sound of a dry sea

Trapped inside an empty shell.