Long Player

The name’s a strange one:

Sexsmith by trade or by vocation

with voice of plummy angel and sad child’s face,

distilling pitfalls of our frailty,

miniatures of moments,

reveries of sorrow and of fate.

Friend in need

when I have need of tender mending,

I love that you don’t strut and are not smug –

are sweetly vulnerable instead,

self-effaced Canadian

with nest of hair and doleful eyes.

Ghosts of ’60s harmonies

haunt every song and well-honed phrase

repurposed and reclaimed:

Your former glory in a flash,

Now lost in thought or thought out loud.

Who cares if you’re not hip.

These songs will sound around the world

through my remaining days.