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