Blue Lester

Harlem tenor man
how can you be so
mean to me baby? Swing
then sigh a moan roundly
hollow and insistent
as though every star
fell from the sky alone
to spread like butter
from your golden
bell.

Your breath to my heart,
rhapsody is blues
from one frail ghost
who casts in me a spell
of pain and past of nothing
left to lose.

Prez at the window
nodding by the bar
or scraping low along
an avenue beat down
in years so close yet
far away from me
lost in this fog
of you.

I ain't got nothin but my muse, baby
Singin deep and old as blues, baby.