SHATTERING

PARIS --Stephane Grappelli, a French jazz violinist who helped shatter the image of jazz as an exclusively American art form, died Dec. 1. He was 89. --The Associated Press

Stephane     you have taken me  
down to the frozen pond to let go. 
Hear December  nineteen -ninety -sevening- it
out the club door?
	Snowdrift riffs and rifts accompany us. 
We cross tracks with yesterday deer pressing on.
	Pause	where 
a great chirping interrupted bird took flight sight-
reading its tripleted impressions.  On the ledge     
your electric strings melt trickles
down moss in what we interpret a gift of sun.
	Classic frictions squealing 
gut to gut, an improvisational piece
with field mice tunnelling under.
      
		Flash-fingering Grappelli
      shuffling here with me
       			        fiddling free
      where my 
      movement tries to freeze
		swing me off with you!

	We reach the north cove by the sprucetrees 
planted for the children grown tall. 
Your chilling chin on your warming
violin you slide with me to huddle 
in this bare little bowl thrown by the wind     
wheeling around lowest boughs. 
A natural resting place for a honey of a solo
			    
		oh!
	
	before you go.  That south-coming sun
on our expressions not so much choosing
to shine on us as we choosing to burn our 
faces with it  one more time while there is time.
	What immaterial difference remains
between being alive here and 
being alive gone.     
		
		Off 
beating     
		hot      up
jumping Stephane!     Merci! 

so  hope  becomes  Wagner�s  piano  lashed  to  a  sleigh  of  dreams


drawn  endlessly  by  a  straining  team  of  nags  willful  and  clear  they


pull  her  through  mountainous  depths  of  drifted  reality  to  play  with  the


world  and  the  world  with  her  on  a  much  smaller  scale  of  course