She’s just finished mourning for us all
the fact that spring is here
above the buzz and clatter of this crowded café

where I stopped reading the paper
because it’s impolite not to pay attention
while Ella Fitzgerald is singing.

And in the pause that follows, I imagine her
turning away from the bright, entranced
face of the microphone,
kidding with the sound technicians

while putting on her hat and a pale green sweater
before she steps out of the studio
and into a spring day as it played out
in 1951, the year I was born,

stopping on the way home at a little deli
to pick up something for supper,
turning words like macaroni
and potato salad
into tiny American songs
for the pimply kid behind the counter,

who thinks nothing of it,
who has his own problems,
who bears his own secret beauty through  the world.