Memory of Mike Taylor [Poem by Michael Dennison]

[Jagsu]

MEMORY OF MIKE TAYLOR – A YEAR ROUND
[Poem by Michael Dennison]

A spring day, rain for the grass
puts the green on the table and evenings of late sun
and then the History Channel
time in a man’s life to ripen, to pass

as June crawls in with a birthday, stands up
like green corn on the stalk, fresh and wide open
to a good joke, the promise of a late show loaded with guests,
with irony gentle, universal as night

and June struts into July. Fireworks churn
in endless blue dusk of heaven as steaks char at the grill.
As certain as morning, there’s time
for some more good coffee with cream.

Sky comes to earth with sun and rain, comes for roses
and a cold drink of water from the well.
So the air buzzes with waves of talk radio
all day, so the necessary fly dies by nightfall.

Mike says take your own time, the bass register
is mine. The little clocks? Doesn’t matter
what they say, only the great clock counts
and no man born can really read the time.

Autumn has promises of its own, bronze and rust,
amber chamber music bittersweet as russets.
A slow finality, lonely, you hear a train
as you close windows and doors to rest.
It’s a hard drive in snow along the bluffs from sixty-five
and even the good Ford wants to stall, cover up, and sleep,
as tires crunch ice on snow, crack the code to asphalt
soft as divorce, hard as a father’s love.

At the top of the hill tired and bowed by the new year,
he gets out, stares down the icebound curve of river
thinks about you, me, hungry doves and the hard road down.
How we share is the true measure of love.

And as all things break, the cold breaks
as one hand turns the window latch and two lift the frame.
First one window and then more windows open as
Mike says take your own time, the bass register is mine.

[Anicet Mundundu]

It is hard to believe that he has been gone! I miss him (the doctor) a lot.

[Dr. Nelson Harrison]

This is beautiful and true. I try to listen to some Mike Taylor bass daily. Always keep him in my car. He still teaches me.

[Elizabeth "Betty" Asche Douglas]

Your poem is a masterpiece for a master. I knew Mike (and the Taylor family as a whole) throughout his life. Our homes were only 7 minutes apart, he in Bridgewater, I in Rochester here in Beaver County. I worked with him on a fairly regular basis, sometimes as a bass/vocal duo. He commanded the bass register in a Betty Douglas & Friends concert at the Butler County Community College just a week before his untimely demise.
I sang at his memorial service and accepted his awards on his selection to the Pittsburgh Jazz Society Hall of Fame and in his honor at the Beaver County Musicians Hall of Fame. I miss him, his wry smile, offbeat sense of humor, and the chuckling vocalizations he made while doing all those sweet things with the bass that was a part of his very being.

[George Heid]

Mike... you are so missed.

[Paul Thompson]

Yes!! The bass register was his.