Preservation Hall Jazz Band

“I found my love in Avalon beside the bay.”
The banjo player sang slowly and sweetly.

A sudden nostalgia washes over me.
A memory long buried of this sweet song.
The Aragon Ballroom. A Chicago summer.
I close my eyes, suck in a breath,
and give in to feel of the memory.

A sweet boy, his tall, slender frame bending slightly toward me,
Swirling me smoothly under his arm,
the silly “dance” face he made,
the exaggerated flip of his hands as he grabs mine,
making me laugh.

Now, 45 years later,
the music, rhythmic and dreamy,
the roar of the trombone, the plink of the banjo,
and the sharp blasts of the trumpet,
pierce my chest as if in a healing.

A strong feeling of his presence surrounds me.
Is he here? Drifting around me?
Drawn to this band, the music we shared?
“I left my heart in Avalon and sailed away.”

The boy I could have, should have? married
had I not been a foolish girl with other plans.
The handsome man,
briefly seen 20 years later,
surprising my heart with the power of old love.
A splotch of white then
right smack in the front
of his shock of brown hair.

The band quiets for the piano solo,
a carefree wandering up and down the keyboard.
Accompaniment for my reverie.

I remember the surprising depth of my despair,
a few years ago, when I learned that
he was gone.
taking my thoughts of “someday” with him.
I stared at the picture on the web site
through a wash of tears.
The thinned face, older, lined, still handsome.
The lips narrowed and serious looking.
the eyes tired.

I touched the face.
I wanted to reach into the picture
and lift the Marine General’s hat pulled low,
to see if the hair was full
and white.

The band finishes with a flourish of horns.
“I dream of her and Avalon from dusk till dawn,
and so I think I'll travel on....
to A-va-lon.”

I open my eyes
to the harsh reality of the concert hall.
And sigh.