James Taylor

In the 1970s I was given for Christmas
a big red pair of AM-radio headphones.
They were my prized possession. Aside from
the theme to Rocky, the song I remember
with the greatest fondness is James Taylor's
You've Got a Friend. I had a very clear
picture in my mind's eye of the people
populating that song; I could see two cold
lovers bundled together in the New-York winter,
amid the bluffs of snow in Central Park.
"Winter, spring, summer, or fall, all you got
to do is call." I honestly believed one day
I would find a woman who reminded me of
that song, who would suffer the insufferable
with me, winter, spring, summer, and fall.
Wouldn't you know, such a lot is only for
precious few of us. Now I must content
myself with fractions of my boyhood hopes,
shrapnel of the ways I dreamed life might
be for me. For my family. Imagine that.
I once dreamed I might one day have my own
family. James Taylor's music and my
memories of myself as a boy, hoping,
dreaming big, ever the romantic, are
just about the only things keeping the dream
alive anymore. James Taylor and my fate.
Who'd have thunk it?

(2008)