Around Here

Blossom Dearie died in her apartment in Greenwich Village of natural causes on Saturday. She was 82. I wrote about her at Hooky Beach a long time ago. I don't have anything to add, except that I'm sorry... My best friend lived a block away from the bistro on 10th Street where Blossom Dearie sang every night. We'd drop in and catch a show - there she'd be, sitting at the piano, the cafe singer nonpareil, surrounded by the rapt and the recherché, spinning the standards with a voice both impossibly delicate and "full of money", far into the night. Goodnight, sweet flower.

Chilled loops spiral through dappled air. Out there, beyond the shops, the trees, the surf's ceaseless rush keeps ragged time. In the pool dry posture thaws into atavistic coils. The customary channels have dried up. We transfer want routed through firewalls and Berne . You called me by a moody name. In the dunes memory declines to a sense of heat. "They're in-house," he said, the parsley fries. Menu, magazine. A muted blare keeps pace, assuming a ground state of desire. In the cove the anhingas listen only to the fatalistic raga of the leaves.