Etched in the clouds, dancing
round the sun, musical notes
shaped in the throat of gods
walked through a garden of blossoms

of jazz giving birth to the sound,
the sound of a sax clutched
in the black hands of a man,
a man named Charlie Parker….

Charlie "Bird" Parker: his Stetson
tilted in a, "you can't tell me nuttin"
attitude, holding that Alto Sax like
a test tube in a research lab.

He searched that cloak of rhythm
that wasn't in The Guinness Book Of Records,
nor ever heard before, but it swept through spirit and soul
like the shells of war that swept the shore on "D" Day.

Charlie's fingers a blur,a flatted fifth,
a hone of harmonic past, knocked flat
a pompadour in the first row; a whirlwind
that etched a spot in jazz to last forever.

Charlie Parker soared high on innovative
improv's on "Cherokee" in that chicken shack
in Harlem but the monkey on his back, that March,
robbed Charlie "Bird" Parker of one more 4th of July.

by Walt Barger
April 12, 2001