He keeps a flute in his boot.
Plays it for strangers, listens for little crashes of loot.
Sleeps on a stone bench near the ocean.
Sometimes he gets drunk , hollers, causes commotion.
Some days he ***** about
in his loose oversized castoff suit
looking as if he might fly
or cry when the sun shines blindness
across his two *** eyes.
Passersby know not
that once he brought the house down
with Ellington in a jazzy joint in Harlem town.