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