Consecration by Adam Tavel

for Bill Evans, 1929 – 1980

The photo gives no year. I guess by hair,
the spotlit sheen on your pomade—you’ve yet
to grow it out. But junk already claims
your veins. See how that mohair suit sags off
your shoulder blades, which slump toward keys
you hold sustained? This angle makes it seem
as if you’re harmonizing shadow arms
your body blackens down the stage. How small
the audience you mesmerize tonight
I cannot say. Perhaps some child is there
with his au pair, rashed by loss, who sounded out
the note his father scrawled before he found
a hose and blue garage. Help him forget
this hurt he yearns to bury, chord by chord.

Adam Tavel’s third poetry collection, Catafalque, won the 2017 Richard Wilbur Award (University of Evansville Press, 2018). He is also the author of The Fawn Abyss (Salmon Poetry, 2017) and Plash & Levitation (University of Alaska Press, 2015), winner of the Permafrost Book Prize in Poetry. His recent poems appear, or will soon appear, in The Georgia Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Puerto del Sol, New Ohio Review, The Hollins Critic, and Tampa Review, among others. You can find him online at http://adamtavel.com/.