| Like I knew when it was happening |
| that fifty years after |
| I could still tell you about it |
| and you still wouldn't really believe me: |
| It's one 'clock in the morning |
| and I wander into Montmartre looking |
| for Tom and Rod so that we can go over |
| to the White Horse, play chess and drink 'arf n arf', |
| the half-stout, half-lager house special they serve |
| that's ten times stronger than the watered down rotgut |
| they are serving here in Montmartre |
| because the place is backed and being run by the local dons |
| who can't run anything strictly legit, |
| even when they are trying to cash in |
| on the bohemian craze |
| and the success of the coffee houses |
| like Rienzi's and Pandora's Box |
| and the jazz places like Vanguard |
| who every night pack in tourists |
| coming to look at us locals |
| dressed like bums with our long hair, jeans and sandals, |
| our uniforms of art and protest, |
| nursing the cappuccino or the stein of beer |
| while we carry on our business |
| of bull----ing each other up and down |
| the Kierkegaard, Sartre and Zen Buddhist block, |
| |
| Rienzi's, Pandora's and the Van are making money |
| like no one was supposed to, |
| including Tom's place, which is the Café Figaro, |
| but the guys running the Montmartre |
| don't like the locals because they dress "sloppy," |
| can nurse a drink all night |
| and try to smoke joints disguised as cigarettes, |
| which they call "bombers", |
| so they stop letting the locals sit at tables, |
| institute (would you believe) a dress code |
| and now every night |
| there are fewer tourists to stare |
| at the handful of better dressed locals |
| who have bothered to try to make it past Ruffino |
| the bouncer maitre d' at the door, |
| who is also my childhood buddy |
| and who tells me, |
| "it's slower than Ernie Lombardi tonight, |
| but something's happening with the jazz guys |
| in the front." Tom and Rod wave at me, |
| bursting with excitement like kids |
| watching the neighbor's wife undress |
| with the shade up, and I know |
| it's not a chess move but something real cool and unusual coming down. |
| Tom points to the musicians, a jazz quartet |
| Montmartre hired on the cheap, |
| and they are moving an extra chair onto the stand |
| and the tenor sax player is handing |
| his horn and strap to a fat guy in a rumpled suit |
| who looks just like and is |
| CHARLIE PARKER! |
| YARDBIRD! |
| Here at Montmartre! |
| And he is going to blow tenor, not alto. |
| |
| He warms up for a minute with runs and arpeggios |
| that any sax player would die for |
| but as a former tenor man |
| I can tell his tone |
| is no threat to Byas or the Hawk |
| and he will thin the tenor into an alto |
| with his first blow. |
| The other musicians wait in reverence, |
| as if they are standing before St. Peter |
| waiting to be admitted to heaven, |
| the leader and the Bird nod at each other |
| and off they fly into Ornithology, |
| with the Bird trying to teach everyone |
| just how high the moon was, is, and will ever be |
| and how high he is now. |
| He zigs and zags through ins and outs of chords |
| in quantum leaps of invention, |
| he follows a two-note "mop mop" |
| with a five-hundred-notes-a-minute- |
| run-lasting-for-what-almost-seems- |
| all-of-jazz-eternity, |
| leaving us breathless from listening, |
| segueing back to the melody |
| and to the other musicians |
| who have been happy just to listen, |
| keep the beat and play the chords |
| |
| but now with encouraging nods from Bird |
| they try their own tentative solos |
| which get more confident as they go along |
| for now they can tell everybody, |
| agents, other musicians, their children |
| and their children's children |
| fifty years after, just like I'm doing now |
| that they played with Charlie Parker... |
| |
| Bird grabs the tenor again |
| and the room bursts into one great haze |
| of waitresses pushing drinks, |
| tourists not knowing just where they're at |
| or what they're listening to, |
| management and stoned locals wondering |
| what's the big deal with this Fatso |
| and when can we close up, |
| but Tom and Rod and I and just a few others |
| inhaling and savoring this hippest |
| of puffy fat black dying junkie miracles |
| glowing and blowing at the center of the haze |
| like Orpheus unbound, |
| know as we gaze at each other |
| in the coolest of surmises |
| that we are living in a moment |
| like no other in jazz and human history |
| and which most of you won't believe |
| even fifty years after: |
| Charlie Parker playing |
| a borrowed tenor sax for free |
| in Montmartre Café in Greenwich Village, |
| a few weeks before he died. |