☛ Submission for October, 2024 issue (Vol. 5, No. 2) is going on. The last date for submission is 30 September, 2024.

TIME SIGNATURES

 


TIME SIGNATURES

‘Out of Nowhere’, The Dave Brubeck Quartet, 1954

For Roger Street

-         Seán Street (U.K.)

 

The jazz those mornings bequeathed to us, deferred

conversations improvised like variations on a theme,

new riffs, fugues and repetitions, always

finding a way to make a song out of kinship.

 

You know that moment on Jazz Goes to College,

side one, track two, near the end: question and answer ,

call and response between Paul and Dave?

That’s us right there, duetting as we come to the coda.

 

An overdue flowering of friends’ counterpoint,

a lifetime to discover one another river’s

width apart. What if it’s late in the day

to sign our names on Time? No matter, worth it.

 

****