Is Eric Dolphy Coming or Going?

It’s 12:08 and Frank O’Hara
is late for lunch. He often gets
lost outside New York. I’m in Starbucks
near DuPont Circle sitting with Billy Strayhorn.
Our conversation turns to Pittsburgh and for
a moment I want to be August Wilson
or Roberto Clemente. Billy asks to see
my Washington Post. He wants to know
what the police are doing these days.
Frank arrives and he looks like
Mona Lisa with a smile. Maybe it’s
the danger that comes with museum work.
Eric Dolphy is eating next door, he whispers.
At times Frank can be as difficult as Ashbery.
Have they ever met?  Imagine all
the New York poets moving to New Jersey
and never taking the Amtrak to DC.
Billy hands the newspaper back. It’s 12:30
and everyone is in a sentimental mood.
We rise and go next door. Dolphy
looks up from his plate and says, The
food sucks but it’s better than the music
people are playing these days. He laughs
and tells Frank to keep his day job.
Billy tries to be as gracious as Duke.
He nods at Dolphy and the two of them
walk outside for a smoke. I think of
Dolphy’s Out to Lunch album. The
clock tells me this man is never coming
back.

Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. He hosts the WPFW morning radio show On the Margin with E. Ethelbert Miller and hosts and produces The Scholarson UDC-TV which received a 2020 Telly Award. Miller’s latest book If God Invented Baseball (City Point Press) was awarded the 2019 Literary Award for poetry by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus.

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