But where do you keep the jazz?
Where do you store the melancholy,
the self-reflection and the escape?

Take me to the place you keep
for your inner, your deeper,
your best kept back
and maybe we can sit and explore.
We could jazz and coalesce into a more honest
and more innovative improv.

Oh, where do you keep your jazz?
Where do you store the rare, the more sought after?
Have you kept it safe? Away from the light and heat of day?
Do you bring it out at night? Or are you driven by reluctance?
Are you reticent to the point of distrust?
Do you refuse to ever let the needle lightly play on the surface
lest dust taint its perfection?

Please tell me, where do you keep the jazz?
The jazz I heard play when we were young,
the jazz that was pure improvisation,
a ready and clear reflection of heaven’s rhythms
and the suddenness of the stark dawn chorus?

Where have you hidden the fresh, the unforced,
the chimes that once answered God's glory?

Please tell me you remember
where you hid the key.