Not ‘Summertime’ but Autumn's 'September Song'

I should get under the shower and wash my hair and all, soon.

But I’ve spent half the morning trying to write to the prompts: 

‘Not (Blank; fill it in)’ and ‘The name of a piece of music,’

both to be the title of the poem – and this is as far as I’ve got.

What I mean is, nothing apart from that title I’d want to keep.

 

I was going to say something about how the parental promises

in ‘Summertime’ are lies; because living is never easy, not

for anyone. But then I remember the children in Gaza,

and I decide I can’t really complain. I thought to point out

that my days dwindle down, but then I recall I’ve had 84 years.

And I remember the children in Gaza, and in other places too,

who don’t get to live many days at all, and for whom that living

is brutal, shocking, agonised, insane. And I think that whatever

I’ve endured (and there have been some things) in the face

of all that, I have suffered nothing. Grief, pain, but no horrors.

There are truths which defeat poetry. Which song itself

can't adequately reflect. Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ might come

closer, but I’m a painter in words, and they fail me. Meanwhile

threats of both flooding and fires repeat daily around me.

My own country is no refuge; not sure to stay peaceful and safe..

I lived, I perceive, through a sometime Summertime,

when the fish were sometimes jumping – right into the boat

from the lines we trailed. Where we grew no cotton, but 

the sun was often high, benignly. I see that my Autumn days 

are dwindling peacefully and comfortably, precious enough.

The poem has nowhere else to go, yet I don’t want to end

on even a weak, qualified high note. To count my blessings

feels detached, isolated, selfish, wilfully blind. With no end

in sight (except the end of the planet) I let it peter out 

in a mess of confusion, incomplete, unresolved….

Find here: Summertime lyrics.  September Song lyrics.

[Also see Revised version.]

As indicated in the poem, the NaPoWriMo prompt was to be inspired by a piece of music and use its name as the title of the poem. The Poem A Day prompt was 'Nothing (blank),' fill in the blank and make that the title of the poem. Not so easy to combine this time. But if I hadn't tried but written separate poems, would they have taken me anywhere different? Perhaps not.

[Revised 20 July 2024]