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If I could speak
another language,
wrap my tongue around
its unfamiliar syllables,
I would speak the language of jazz.


If I could pull a sentence from
the clouds, write it on your heart,
if I could make it make sense to you,
make it fuse to your cells
like electric lightning fuses itself to the sky,


just before that, and not a moment sooner,
I would hold a note
just a fraction off-key,
toss in some soft piano,
jive with fluid, soulful sweetness,


and just when you might begin to wonder
at the harmony of it all; just then,
and not a moment sooner,
I would rivet together a wall of sound,
a bright ribbon, silken rainbows flailing,
so that it hits your body's center like a wave breaking,
as smooth horns deliver ecstatic culmination
stolen from the sun.


Then,
and only then,
when your head lolls back like a drunken mariner,
when your eyes expand in lambent rhapsody,
I would know you speak my language
too.