the drummer

His eyes looked beyond to a deep content, his face wrinkling upward into a worn-in smile.
- ‘Chicago…now that’s a small world,’ he said in his drawn-out, poetic cadence. ‘That’s where I grew up,’ feeling the deep hum each syllable produced in his throat.

The two of them, the black man with the salted beard, and the old American boy, stood by the cobbled and sloping street that wound noisily through the city center.

- ‘Is that where you learned?’ asked the American.
- ‘Yeah, I come from a family of musicians,’ said the older man, hands in his pockets still tingling wholesome and raw.

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a simple thing i wrote today, inspired by a man i saw drum and then met outside the bar.