All the Things You Are (Reimagined)

All the things you are aren't enough to forestall

The crashing financial headaches

Or late night battles over unused toothbrushes

Unmunched lunches, lights not shut, surfaces not swept

Or the existential morass surrounding the kid's sagging pants

Even your "promised touch of springtime" can't protect us

From the terrible job Leo did on the roof

That caused the flood next to the garbage cans

Which culminated in the tragic call to the roofer

Who really and truly fell

I wonder if I ever told you there was a time

When ripping through the chord changes

Of this old song afforded a guy a place of honor

Among young jazzers

How back then, Sam

Furnace was my go-to pilot sitting next to me at the Henry Street

Big band alto strapped to his side all the things

He was achingly elegant, quiet, focused a study in fire

Who could imagine that one day

We'd attach those headphones to his fragile bluegrey

Head five short months after the bad news

Mobley, Griffin and Coltrane singing him

Into the "breathless hush of evening from their golden bells

Truth is, "Things" change

And the song was never a favorite

Just another river to flop around in

Another impossible lawn made greener

By someone else's eight notes

Today when we were cooking oatmeal

I heard Sonny Criss drive his Selmer

Through the "Angel glow that lights a star" line

And I marveled at the metaphorical power of stars

How they rise above the bridges of all these old tunes

Even glistening above our most tragic roofs

And I wondered what star big Sam ended up on

And whether or not he stuck with the Lamberson mouthpiece

Or switched back to the Selmer C Star

Opting for a slightly thinner line

To thread a breathless heaven