Silent Poetry Reading

It's time again for the annual Silent Poetry Reading, where bloggers around the world devote today's post to a poem of their choice. Since I chose a Louisiana poet last year, I'll keep with that this year.

MORNING JOY

Piano buttons, stitched on morning lights.
Jazz wakes with the day,
As I awaken with jazz, love lit the night.
Eyes appear and disappear,
To lead me once more, to a green moon.
Streets paved with opal sadness,
Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy,
And jazz.

Bob Kaufman

A little more information on the poet from Poets.org:

Bob Kaufman was born on April 18, 1925, in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of thirteen children. His mother was a black Catholic from Martinique, his father a German Orthodox Jew. As a child, Kaufman took part in both Catholic and Jewish religious services; he was also exposed to the voodoo beliefs of his maternal grandmother. At the age of thirteen, he ran away and joined the Merchant Marine, surviving four shipwrecks and circumnavigating the globe nine times in the next twenty years.

When Kaufman left the Merchant Marine in the early 1940s, he went to New York City to study literature at the New School, where he met William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. The three went to San Francisco, joining Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the center of the Beat scene.