Letter to a Jazz Player

Coltrane died, you said,
because he blew his horn
until he broke his gut.

I listened in your room.
The fierce tones were black,
piercing birds flying off
until they were lost,
but he always brought them back --
always in the end they rested
as if on his horn, or his arm.

And when I heard your notes ripping
I thought I would find you empty
as a tin can,
your insides strewn to the wind,
and I wished I could write
like that, straining
until words grew and I was nothing
but a husk.

But music cannot be forced from the flesh
coiled inside that keeps me alive,
I know that now.
I write remembering this morning,
how the sidewalk jarred
through my legs,
and in the words I hear my knees grind,
the music that holds my body up.