It’s 10:15 on George a Tuesday

call it a rostered off day

I take slow admiring the art deco

lobby of the Dymocks Building

because somewhere up above is Birdland

who’ve rung to tell me my Esbjörn Svensson Trio

Good Morning Susie Soho has come in
And I’m sidling up to four Otis crates

out of the 1930s as sockless hipster execs

risk barked ankles from goods deliveries

and I even take the time to read

above the foyer clock time conquers all

which it told me Monday, when Birdland was closed
                                         but today it’s open

the cage labours four floors

more brush turkey than Charlie Parker

while I’m thinking all the shops I want

nest high in heritage building

corner suites

                        rucksack repairs, jazz CDs
I pick up the EST and flick desultorily

through sales table discs almost buying

an old Catholics (not on sale) then walk

four flights to daylight, the mall,

consider picking up some socks and jocks

but on a third thought drop into JB Hi Fi

on the chance they’ve YoYo Ma’s Bach cello suites

                                                                (they don’t)
but its OK I remember other music outlets

(classical music outlets) which I google

but there’s nothing now Fish on George has closed

ditto Michael’s Music Room

and that place in the QVB top gallery

I’m sweating by the time I get there

                                    there’s no sign of it

another eaterie, it’s all high-end

accessories and landfill ready clothes

and of Yo Yo who sold out the Opera House

last week and whose spruce-speaking gut

upscaled our impulse likes and piques

to places outside grief and love

there is no trace;

                                    if he exists

it’s as a string of ones and zeros

and he may or may not feel something

what exactly I’m not sure’s been lost

maybe some way we had of breathing.