For A.H.
The girls listen to old-time Ella Fitz,
big band swagger a foreign dance, the bass
not dropped hip-hop electric, its pulsate beat
a sure sign they’ve arrived at the heart’s true flux.
I tell how you danced nights to trumpets, sax,
the brass shining in spotlights, though I break
to name your favorite song and can barely
hear the radio in your kitchen, the flash
to you playing solitaire too quick to fix
my childhood eye to fact. Fiction believed
is truth of a kind. I can say Count Basie
swung your hips; Artie Shaw, your soul. To ask,
the story you’ve shared is more the drive home,
you at the wheel, than a kiss stolen mid-hum.
The Lake, January 2016