Chet Baker's face is a montage of slides in my mind,
a kaleidoscope of his life and our shared time on earth.

It's the same face you see on the "Let's Get Lost" album,

that you see in Carole Reiff's famous 1955 photo

of a young man with a horn blowing it into the smoky air

of a jazz club, but the first has the deep etchings

of a worn-out life, one lived lurching beyond limits, getting

lost and loving it, finding in the barrel of the gun pointed at him

nothing but the fascination of a world unexplored and beckoning.

Then there's another photo of a young man in a cap

and overcoat against a backdrop of Times Square, face smooth as

a bubble, eyes dazzled by the New York lights - - all those

etched lines yet to come, only the hopes of boyhood behind him,

and everything, absolutely everything, waiting to be done.