Saturday Serenade

The honey-smooth voice of Johnny Hartman and golden tenor sax of John Coltrane.

NIGHTCLUB

You are so beautiful and I am a fool

to be in love with you

is a theme that keeps coming up

in songs and poems.

There seems to be no room for variation.

I have never heard anyone sing

I am so beautiful

and you are a fool to be in love with me,

even though this notion has surely

crossed the minds of women and men alike.

You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool

is another one you don't hear.

Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.

That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon

I am listening to Johnny Hartman

whose dark voice can curl around

the concepts of love, beauty, and foolishness

like no one else's can.

It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette

someone left burning on a baby grand piano

around three o'clock in the morning;

smoke that billows up into the bright lights

while out there in the darkness

some of the beautiful fools have gathered

around little tables to listen,

some with their eyes closed,

others leaning forward into the music

as if it were holding them up,

or twirling the loose ice in a glass,

slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,

borne beyond midnight,

that has no desire to go home,

especially now when everyone in the room

is watching the large man with the tenor sax

that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.

He moves forward to the edge of the stage 

and hands the instrument down to me

and nods that I should play.

So I put the mouthpiece to my lips

and blow into it with all my living breath.

We are all so foolish,

my long bebop solo begins by saying,

so damn foolish

we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

~Billy Collins~

Lauren Elizabeth Drummond

Lauren Elizabeth Drummond

Photo taken by her Poppy on August 14, 2011

Taken from us on August 15

She was so full of life, from the moment she was born. Full of intense curiosity and intelligence, she wanted to be in the middle of every conversation. Her smile was radiant and at times mischievous. She liked to get her own way, and often if she got the better of me, she would say "You're the best, Grammy!" She loved Princesses and pink and animals and dancing and music, and so many things, everything, really, about life.

How is it possible for a child to be laughing and happy after a day with her family and her two dogs, spent at the park where they had a picnic and fed the ducks...how can she be here one minute and the next minute be gone?  Her daddy stopped to let a deer cross the road as did other drivers on the opposite side of the road. This young woman, herself a mother of young children, will forever have to live with the fact that her inattention took my wonderful granddaughter's life away forever.  There were no skid marks...she never even slowed down. She had just left a funeral and was on her way back to work. Even though Lauren and her brother were secured in safety seats, the impact of the crash drove her seat forward as her daddy's seat broke and collapsed backward. The surgeon did everything he could to put her back together, but there was just too much trauma to her brain. Her mommy, who herself is a registered nurse/nurse practitioner, knew at the scene that it was very, very bad, but hoped against hope that she was wrong. 

Lauren will be laid to rest beside her Uncle Joshua, who she never got to know. She will be wearing a beautiful pink dress, a pink hat, in a pink Princess casket, with her dog Molly's ashes tucked in beside her.

My baby girl Lauren is dead from a car accident.