PLAYING MARTINU

Dec 8 birthday

I played your jazz idioms
in your classical music
Martinu
knowing you studied
in Paris
with the conductor
Charles Munch
who lived near us
watching him as a boy
walk his dog
up the Blue Hills
my aunt introduced me
to you as a child prodigy
and we talked of Martinu
at the symphony
then had an audition,
yet with the musical world
at my feet,
"BZ suddenly turned
into a crazy Beat"
(some relative said)
at my family's only hearing
yet comparing
every note of every phrase
of playing Martinu
he thought that poetry
was only a phase
of my adolescence haze
yet the presence of words
kept me to relax
interweaving, illuminating
with my violin and sax
in a recital circling on tour
and on Martinu's birthday
he will not be ignored
but will play in his honor
at a local venue
from his first sonata's score.