My favorite record

My favorite record in my youth was a 45rpm record of Paul McCartney singing “Yesterday.”

 

In these later years, he looks much different . So do I!

I wrote this poem about it:

Hearing Yesterday

 

Hearing “Yesterday” the first time – 1964-

my bedroom in the house on Everhart Street,

I was fifteen.

February night.

At night my radio could tune into Boston.

When I turned it on, the song was just beginning –

Three syllables down the scale,

cello droning behind them.

Throat tightened, legs loosened.

My favorite song forever.

 

Forty-five years later,

troubles not so far away .

One long lost love called in 1971

better to laugh in the desert

than cry by the creek,

but I could not move to the desert.

 

Today I live by that creek again –

cornered by circumstance,

shedding my escape fantasies,

singing with Ringo

No no no no I don’t smoke it no more…

 

By the creek,

today tenuous as a spider web,

unpredictable as fire.

 

I believe in yesterday,

which does not change,

where John Lennon still walks

unaware

out the door of the Dakota.

 

Another song says don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

But I believe in yesterday.

Another song says the landslide brought me down…

and I’m getting older, too,

so I believe in yesterday.

 

 

 

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