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Vegetarian Physics
The tofu that's shown up overnight in this house is frightening
proof of the Law of Conservation.
Matter that simply cannot be created or destroyed.
Matter older than Newton, who knew better than to taste it.
Older than Lao Tsu, who thought about it but finally chose harmonious non-interference.
I'd like to be philosophical, too.
See it as some kind of pale, inscrutable wisdom
among the hot dogs, the cold chicken, the left-over deviled eggs.
But I'm talking curdled soy bean milk.
And I don't have that kind of energy.
I'd rather not be part of the precariously metaphorical wedding of modern physics with the ancient eastern mysteries, but still
whoever stashed the tofu in my Frigidaire had better come back for it soon.
I'm not Einstein, but I'm smart enough to know a bad idea when I see it,
taking up space, biding its time
like so much that demands our imperfect attention amid the particle roar of the world
going nowhere fast.
In My Dream, Coleman Hawkins
In my dream, Coleman Hawkins walked right up to me at the corner of West 52nd and Broadway
and he actually said, "Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?"
And even in my dream, I realized he'd been dead since 1969, although I still couldn't believe it,
his not-knowing Carnegie Hall was only blocks away.
So I figured he'd meant all along to be setting me up instead.
But who was I to deliver a punchline to 'The Hawk' himself?
The Royal Bean to my ear, the unmistakable heavyweight of the tenor saxophone world.
"I'll blow you a real quick chorus or two if you help me out just this one time, man."
And that's exactly what the late Coleman Hawkins did.
So, finally, I had to tell him: "Practice."
And, I guess, he had to laugh.
"That's really what I needed to hear."
Then he thwacked me with his immortal horn and I woke up to the coolest breeze through any window, ever.
My head still ringing with every strain of that jazz man's body and soul.