For Ornette Coleman

Mourning Song
for Ornette Coleman

A song crowned of crows.
A fold of notes inside a rose.
Notes broken on the road.
White horn, hover lower.

Grammar of sound
sung a crow tone low.
Broken vowels hovering
above the horn’s road.

Over a field a lone
crow flies low.
Song not gone.
Song still blown.

Horn’s tones
at dusk blow
shelter from the rust.
Each note a road.

No compass
of chords. Only
horn’s ache.
A crow moon aloft, forlorn.

Go with a stone’s throw.
A "moment’s gnosis"
making prayer
from dark chords.

There is a law in what I play.
The shape of chords to come.
Earth horn re-homed.
A white horn blows alone.

Under low stone
deep groan of horn.
A chord is nothing
but the sound of a man.