miles davis “autumn leaves”
from: ballads and blues, 1950
Blackbird
(Miles Davis, 1926–1991)
This is what heroin must feel like—
Miles Davis exacting
his way through “Autumn Leaves”—
pretty and cold, a slowly spreading frost
along synapses and veins,
mapping interstellar darkness
one blue note at a time. Sometimes you could hear
him thinking through the changes
like he was hunting himself, relentless
and without mercy, then a burst of blue
flame, squeezing the Harmon mute like a man screaming
from the bottom of a mine shaft—
but however brightly the darkness glows,
it is still darkness, and Miles was a blackbird
on a field of snow, beautiful, distant, quiet—
and however many steps you take to meet him he flies
ten more feet away.
-Gary West-
