ANNE HARDING WOODWORTH

THE INNISFREE POETRY JOURNAL

Anne Harding Woodworth

900 YEARS OF JAZZ

for Wayne Shorter

In the U of the sax that plays
a twelfth-century carol
I rest as if in a hammock on a holy day.
It’s a listening room and dark,

where I hear celibates sing—voices arched
against stone walls—
in Latin before the refectory meal.

I smoke a cigarette
and drink a short glass of gin,
nothing the color of blood,
just clear, with a slightly bitter tongue.

In the same room I caress a man
because music winds into body crevices
as fluently as it does into the necks of brass.
Notes dredged from a sacred close are moist

tears from a marble virgin’s eyes. Hodie.
Not to be believed by some. Believed by some
and bringing on ecstasy, hodie,
which is the side of miracle I’m on today.

JAZZ PIANO

Her lower jaw gobbles up the upper,
while her crooked fingers grasp
her walking stick, when on the road
we meet, Lucille and I.

When her fingers ache, she says, she plays
piano, and she plays piano even when they don't.
She used to play at moonshine parties tunes
that sounded slightly off from what gods intended.

At eighty-nine, she still slips extra beats in,
odd and cozy, augmented sixths,
fives against the fours at Rocky Hill Baptist,
where they love the way she laces hymns.

She practices piano every day
and walks the road when her knees ache
and when they don’t,
but always with the stick of oak,

calls it her baby-grand leg,
says it helps her trek beyond hymnal.

Anne Harding Woodworth
Anne Harding Woodworth’s poetry is published online and in journals such as Cimarron, Potomac Review, Byline, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She is the author of three books of poetry and has recently completed an MFA in poetry at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she is a member of the Poetry Board at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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Last Updated: Sep 16th, 2007 - 08:34:32