Mireya Perez Bustillo | When Gabriel Came to Call

Max Roach:
 “Black Music and Its Creators”
Library of Congress
Max Roach Papers
 Box 57, folder 1

When Gabriel Came to Call

For Max Roach


Max the last bebopper
Dizzy, Charlie, Bud, all those cats gone on

Dizzy had warned you to stay put
If that heavenly trumpeter Gabriel
wanted you for his band
digging the ringing tone of a “ride” cymbal
to keep the basic beat
using the bass drum for accents

In spite of eulogies, musical tributes,
videos, photographs of you in that
church where Martin had spoken for peace —
all said you were gone —
I even saw your body carried out
the tape playing you for the recessional —
I did not believe it
until I walked up front to the altar rail
and to the left, faced your black stool
the drumsticks on top, the stilled cymbals
on a black-draped pedestal
and heard your hands, a prayer echoing
Gabriel’s trumpet beckon

 
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Mireya Perez-Bustillo, born in Colombia, raised in the Big Apple, writes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in English and Spanish. Among her publications are La picara y la dama (editions Universal), Casos en la comunidad (Houghton Mifflin), and The Female Body (Greenwood Press). Associate Professor Emerita at The College of New Rochelle and Coordinator of the IRP Program at the New School, she has a Ph.D in Spanish Literature. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. BACK to EL DORADO (Floricanto Press, 2020) is her debut novel.