Christopher Butters

Whatever Happened

--after David Ignatow—

Whatever happened to Jerry Sherman, who worked
those days with us at Dalk Garage,
all of us driving those ramshackle taxicabs
through the Manhattan streets?

He led a jazz fusion  band on weekends
and practiced nightly with them.
He would check his trip sheet
quickly at the dispatcher’s window
with a maestro’s  air, 
as if recalling some musical breakthrough
of his band the evening before.

He had dropped out of Umass 
and landed here to make the music scene.   
Wanted to be the next Return To Forever
though in those days he sounded
a little more like Weather Report.     
Talking to me, it was always about his music, 
not  about the usual cabdriver baseball or the lottery.

What happened to him?
How far did he go after leaving us
to lead his band instead of driving a taxi for a living? 
Is he still carrying on with his music,
as I have carried  on with my  poetry,
stubbornly,  passionately?
Does he still think of his beloved jazz?

He played lead guitar and piano.
I can still see him writing
in  that speckled notebook
in the shift room as I signed  in
and he was leaving.

He was working on a rock opera
to end all  rock operas,
but if it was ever produced,
we never heard about it.
The old timers must have figured
he was working through a numbers sheet.

He was a lean, hungry, bound-for-somewhere kid
I rapped with sometimes, as I made my way
past the twists and turns
of my own poetry developing
and driving the taxi through the eye
of the evening rush hour.

After he left to lead his band
I switched to that open shift of his,
driving many days
through the  swarming streets.

 

Poem After A Line By Bob Dylan

"Do you really love me,"
she asked after the Peter, Paul & Mary concert,
"even if I can't play guitar
and everything ?"

"I love you.
I will always love you,"

" I love you just the way you are,"
I said to her.

So beautiful she looked that night
with the Greek fisherman's cap.
So good we were
 at the folk concert together.

In those days I believed
in some sort of immutable essence:
Beauty and Truth
and the light on our faces
as we sang
WE SHALL OVERCOME.

But even
as I proclaimed  this
the ground was shifting
underneath our feet.

MARTIN LUTHER KING SLAIN –
PRESIDENT URGES CALM.
the headline read
later that month.

U.S JETS BOMB
TARGETS IN NORTH VIETNAM.

That spring,
while walking in the park,
we both encounter
the radiant energy
of our first anti-war demonstration.

She dug the theater of it. 
I dug the politics.    

In the end,
we each chose different colleges.

And "he not busy being born
is busy dying."

 

Christopher Butters: Recent poems have been published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag and Blue Collar Review.  When I am not writing poems or joining in the fight  back against the descending MAGA power grab, I continue to seek a publisher for my poetry manuscript "First Contact With The System", reflecting  my 30 years as a court reporter in NYC's Criminal Court.