Excerpts - Gig At The Amtrak

Introduction by the author

Many of us experience the sensation of driving the same route to work every day, and when we reach our destination, we have no recollection of making the trip. We can’t remember passing a single landmark.

Like that trip to work, the study of history tends to be more about destinations and less about the little things along the way. But it is the mundane details of life that fill most of our time on this planet, details our descendants will someday wish we had documented.

As a writer and photographer, I try to spend as much time as I can carefully observing and recording all the seemingly uneventful stops on my journey through life. Extensive research of my family history has made me wish my ancestors had done the same.

In my poems, I try to speak in the voices of the people I have met or overheard, or in my own voice as a participant observer. The old newspaper articles and family stories that are scattered among the poems are just a sample of the many I have encountered on various genealogical sites on the Internet. They are like the scraps of life that wait to be found in the attics of grandparents. Some make me cry, some make me laugh, others just make me wonder. Like my poems and photographs, they are unexpected discoveries.

Poems by the author

Gig At The Amtrak

I was rudely awakened by a man

who set down his suitcase

next to the bench I was sleeping on.

If it wasn't for all these travelers,

I could get some rest.

I checked to see if my horn was there and

found my left hand still squeezing

the handle on the case.

I took out the horn and looked inside and

there were still some notes left in it.

Some college kid with a guitar sat down and

asked me if I played and

I said, "A little bit, I guess."

I saw two men come in carrying briefcases and

wearing gray suits and it got me to thinking

that it's a long time since I've been in a bank.

So I put my horn back in the case and

went down to the biggest bank I could find and

they were playing some stupid arrangement of

"Round Midnight" on the Musak and it made me mad

so I got out my horn and blew a few licks and

then they told me to leave,

so I did.

I'm always leaving places.

I hadn't eaten yet,

so I walked back home and

a train pulled in just as I got there and

and crowd of people poured in

so I pulled out my horn and started playing and

two women came over and put some change

in my horn case and I stopped playing and

bought a Danish and a cup of coffee.

One of the women came back and asked me to play

something by the Duke so I played "Sophisticated Lady"

which I thought was sort of funny and I think she caught it.

Then her husband came over and pretty soon there

was a small crowd and I imagined I was playing again

with Miles and Trane and then I heard the change dropping

into my horn case and I remembered where I was.

Someone applauded and then everyone applauded and

some guy walked up to me and said I sounded like Hank Mobley.

I counted my change and

went down to Tony's for a cheesesteak.