I like to think about the endings,
of bebop’s sudden stops,
of slow vamps fading into nothing

or wild extended sostenuti
no one wants to leave
or, borrowed from a clapboard church,

that tenor sax-and-trumpet
secular amen.
I think of gigs with standards only

and scant rehearsal time
where no musician tries too hard
to get the last word in

and how each time they find a smile
to see it all work out.
I’m half-inclined to think that death

may well be one of these
and how, if there’s a say in it,
I’ll forgo all of the above

and choose a drummer’s punctuation,
that final grace note on the snare,
a bass drum’s soft full stop.

Geoff Page