Stop-Time Poem by Rishma Dunlop

At times I've travelled far from you─
brought to my knees by want
in white rooms in distant cities
and always, music phantoms me─
fevered, carnal─
the rock and roll of my youth,
the blues of Clapton and B.B. King,
the jazz dark and peeling,
Miles and Monk and Billie,
the straight statements of gospel,
Mahaliah Jackson's every note a prayer
that reaches me for brief instants,
after dinner at Frederick's and Robert's
where gulls were circling,
seven settings of the sun sliding into English Bay.
I stood under the catalpa tree that sang white blossoms onto my hair
and through my fingers and I was home.
Blackbirds in the milk-blue light before dawn
scoring the silence.
Stop-time on the wet embouchure of a trumpet.
Music waiting in a white room,
white on white playing on
in the rabid world, and I your winter queen, your one and only.