One year I chased after all those people who sang
at least through the promised gentle summer
of that year, when growing no longer caused pain
when following the ones that made the music
didn’t allow me to do more than just listen
and hearing did nothing more than add words to memory.
Now, much later, what I hold firmly in my memory
are the spirits of those once living who sang
while their fans heard but didn’t really listen.
When Hendrix and Joplin filled the summer
we heard, always, the driving scream of music
trying, but not succeeding, to tell us of shrouded pain.
Another place across the world held different pain
where young men were lost except to memory
their ears no longer open to earthly music
no longer hearing the Doors or the Dead who sang
about love, peace, fire and devils through that summer
to all of us who gathered to sing along and listen.
Some boys and girls were too distracted by attraction to listen
their fever for love bringing them that happy pain
so common in youthful days when time is only summer
when there is no need for sifting through memory.
Country Joe, Captain Cody and Butterfield sang
making background sounds for real life with their music.
But it took many more years before that magical music
went far into my heart, before I really learned how to listen
when Grace Slick or Sebastian or Cass Elliot sang,
whether it was a song of love or lost love’s pain,
a song of today or a song drawn from some writer’s memory.
I found out it wasn’t something to be learned in one summer.
A change came much later when, during a harder summer
I almost threw away what it takes to hear the music.
I almost threw away the strength of shared memory
until a last spark of hope caused me to truly listen
and what I heard wasn’t a singer’s distant cry of pain
but a sad nearly broken love song that no one ever sang.
Now there’s faint memory of that youthful summer
and later words no one ever sang, but today when I hear music
I know how to clearly listen and I can understand the pain
