So Much Love

 

The music of my youth brings back
the memories of those golden
coffeehouse days, when fire and rain
sang in the living room,
I cooked in the kitchen, and
the musicians said they didn't need
an audience, as long as I was there.

The music thrummed in my soul,
all my songs hidden and unsung.
We laughed, we cried, we loved,
we thought that we would be
forever young.

But not one dream, not one love song
would be completely sung.

They sang the soundtrack of my youth
back then. They loved and lost,
as we all did, and so to hear them now,
singing the love, the pain of those lost years,

leaves me broken open, with my own
lost dreams, and all my hidden tears.

Gah. Just watched James Taylor and Carole King's concert on CNN, the music of my youth, coffeehouse days, loving and losing and not knowing how to hold on to the joy..........seeing the two of them singing together now - the music and love enduring despite the memory of past pain - just brings those years all home to me again.

So much love, so much twisted highway. At the end, it is the memory of love that remains.

I have read Girls Like Us, by Carole King, Carly Simon and Joni Mitchell, and also Boys in the Trees by Carly Simon, so I know the history of James leaving Carole for Carly, of Carly's anxiety in performing, of James' addiction issues - how they all loved and lost and suffered like we all did - and out of that the great music they birthed, and the love that has endured all that pain...........in the coffeehouse we felt forever young........what special years they were -  a gift. I have been given so many gifts this lifetime. I can only be grateful.