I wrote a song for her 33 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her first name and last name initial the title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d never written a song for anyone before\u2014or since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There won’t be another one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A three-chord (A-G-D) guitar song somewhat in the hypnotic style of the Velvet Underground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She saw my mediocre rock band perform it in a dive bar,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
hearing for the first time,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
standing in the front row,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
sweat soaked,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
wearing yellow,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
tattoo dancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You are lucky if you ever get to see a face like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part of the chorus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once was a cheerleader<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n now she’s just okay<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Gonna go out and<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n change the world one day<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Why does promise dissipate slowly or disappear suddenly in so many of us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve written so many poems exploring this subject of late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What came along to entomb, waylay or derail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Were Americans like this in the 70s and 80s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps dissipation and disappearance<\/p>\n\n\n\n have always been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe I can only see it now<\/p>\n\n\n\n because of confrontation with the past as you age<\/p>\n\n\n\n and what three decades the Internet has wrought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know I fulfilled my promise<\/p>\n\n\n\n when I became a writer,<\/p>\n\n\n\n unearthed and published lost Oregon stories,<\/p>\n\n\n\n restored wrecked watersheds,<\/p>\n\n\n\n re-materialized after personal extinction,<\/p>\n\n\n\n took care of my dying father,<\/p>\n\n\n\n read eulogies for men<\/p>\n\n\n\n who had no one to eulogize them,<\/p>\n\n\n\n rescued another dog,<\/p>\n\n\n\n learned how to become a friend,<\/p>\n\n\n\n got my homeless friend Mark into housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whenever I play the song today,<\/p>\n\n\n\n it sounds like a dirge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I wrote a song for her 33 years ago. Her first name and last name initial the title. I’d never written a song for anyone before\u2014or since. There won’t be another one. A three-chord (A-G-D) guitar song somewhat in the hypnotic style of the Velvet Underground. She saw my mediocre rock band perform it in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10131"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10137,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10131\/revisions\/10137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}