enters through double glass doors.
Her body leaning, red crochet crowning her head.
Dangling tubes connect to the green oxygen tank
she’s pulling with her right arm. In her left hand,
an old worn sax case.

Trumpet and bass call to each other, bebop, bebop.
Rhythms fly into the air from JP’s electric guitar.
Fingers swim across the black and whites.

Sitting next to me, she sways
to Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology.”
Then the MC announces:
And now we’ll join Ruby, playing Green Dolphin Street.

Slowly she opens the patinaed clasp
and lifts a worn brass sax; one arm steadies her tank.
The wheels clank-clack up steps onto the stage.

She slips her mouth on the reed. Strong vibrations
build to a crescendo. The room becomes the music.
People tap. Their earlobes dip to the offbeat.

Slinging her sax aside, tubes and tank invisible,
Ruby sings like a yellow-tipped whooper swan
flying.

Norma Bradley