Raleigh Jazz Festival, 1986

On the Fayetteville Street Mall
a lean man bobs his head.
His sax shines like copper in a sunbeam,
a splendid rising rhythm….
The swingman inches
across the homemade platform…
his angled jaws shaping and reshaping
while pigeons go on answering
pigeon secrets. Jazz notes blend
with the singing silence.
People dance on red-bricked walkways,
their fingerpoppings
echo off tall marble buildings.
And now the saxophonist bows.
The silence resumes.
The pigeons improvise;
wings (never so numerous as now)
darken the town clock’s face.
In thick bus fumes
the crowd scatters,
their spirits rising
insolent against the sun’s setting.
The hobos linger for leftovers,
in a sacred space of dogwoods.
— Lenard D. Moore

Raleigh poet and teacher Lenard D. Moore’s “Raleigh Jazz Festival, 1986” can be found in Word and Witness: 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry, funded in part by a grant from the N.C. Arts Council; and in the Touring Theatre Ensemble of North Carolina’s adaptation of the anthology, “This is the Place Where I Live.” The TTENC is also funded in part by the Arts Council. The poem originally appeared in Black American Literature Forum and also can be found in Raleigh: A Guide to North Carolina’s Capital, produced by the Raleigh Fine Arts Society.