Hosannah To The Music Of The Streets

the streets, midnight streets
………….drunks, lovers, searchers, dreamers,
……..wild men and women, the young hunting
what it is to be
……………………….a man or a woman, older folk
………….who want to be young again, the crazy,
the mentally lame, the physically impaired, those
…………..who are willing to dare any and everything
……………………….the body and mind can attempt,
the watchers, the doers, the fools, the saints,
………….those who have never achieved, those
who can no longer achieve, those who try and fail,
those who try and get partway to their goal, those
………….who rise high above all while knowing this cannot
……………………….last, will not last, but for now they
……………………………are flying far above what even they
……………………….have imagined, all of these people of the night,
………….of the world abandoned by the straight, the clean, the pure,
………….the abiders of rule and law and expectation, this night world
………….lives in the raw sound of Rollins, Coltrane, the Hawk, the soaring
………….Bird, the cool pain of Miles, the hard bop of Horace Silver,
………….the idiosyncratic genius of Monk and Mingus who see and hear
what we don’t, and create sound and rhythm that bemuses and dumbfounds,
exalts and delights, all this and so much more, both explore the night world
………….which few understand, many roam, investigate, and embrace,
……………………….and only the deep blue jazz hearts of the greatest musicians
can bring alive, articulate, make the great and the small celebrate,
and turn music into prayer, into psalms of the spirit and the flesh,
give me an amen and dive beneath
……………………….the surface of music’s sound, fury, and holiest of blessings