It's Still Life

Louis Armstrong’s Ghost is on the Porch Swing
(a poem after the sway of Summertime)

Heat drips like honey
from the sleepy F of the trumpet,
your hips unspooling
a blue note
between a screen door slam
and a cricket hymn.

Piano keys stick
to the backs of your knees,
while a bass line digs a grave
for all the unlived lives
pooling in your sweet tea.

That’s the magic —
how the melody slurs
it’ll all be fine,
how the strings sweat through
their best Sunday shirts,
how even silence
swells
with next summer’s name.

It’s not the notes, love —
it’s the space
where your breath
misses a beat,
then decides
to stay lost.

Best heard with ‘Summertime’ drifting through the heat — let the space between the notes do the talking.