Lady Day

- J. Patrick Lewis

                      for Billie Holiday

 

Lady could pour you a song,

Coffee and a little cream.

Stir it the whole night long

Into a brown-sugar dream.

Lady could wrap you a note

Up in a velvet night—

Sometimes Manhattan satin,

Always Harlem delight.

Lady Day could sing it

Like nobody ever has

At the Shim Sham Club, Hot Cha Cha,

Joints that swung on jazz.

Her bittersweet songs told Heartbreak,

Meet your sister Pain,

But Lady melted yesterdays

Into beautiful rain.

from: Freedom Like Sunlight: Praisesongs for Black Americans. Copyright 2000.