ALTHOUGH MY OLD MAN WAS SKEPTICAL of a son who sketched flowers in the back yard and wrote poems that did not, let’s face it, even rhyme, he nevertheless gave me a hardback collection of poetry for my fifteenth birthday with the inscription on the flyleaf: See how many you can write.

At the time this struck me as faintly silly, since anyone would agree that the business of a poet is to shoot for quality, not quantity—that is, to craft the best poems possible, not to see how many could be cranked out.

In fairness, I think he was probably just reaching for words to express his somewhat uneasy approval of my odd interest. I should have been grateful, not snide. He was a man who worked with his hands—carpenter, mechanic, tool-and-die maker—and his connection to poetry probably began and ended with lines he was forced to memorize in grade school and never forgot, beginning:

     Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) 
     Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
     And saw, within the moonlight in his room, 
     Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, 
     An angel writing in a book of gold…

He could go on to recite it word for word—And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest—right up into his nineties, when he began to forget the names of his own kids.

TODAY, SO MANY YEARS LATER, I consider the pile of unfinished poems, stories, and songs in the bookshelf next to me. I don’t know the number, and don’t really have the heart to count, but it’s a goodly batch, in the hundreds. Of all the things that have slipped through my hands over the years—books, guitars, friends, wives—that stack of first, second, and third drafts with scribbled revisions and scotch-taped additions has followed me everywhere I’ve gone, like a devoted but smelly dog.

Because, in the end, I did exactly what my old man urged me to do. I saw how many I could write.

Magic Words

Those magic words to make a sunny day 
Magic words to make a rain cloud go away
Sure I know but anyway
It’s still magic  how you say 
Those magic words today

Those magic words to take my blues away 
Magic words to make my worries fade today
Sure I know but anyway
It’s still magic  how you say 
Those magic words today

   And I woke up feeling kind of blue today
   It goes that way some days, some rainy days
   Just one thing I can do, I turn to you
   Turn to you, for...

Those magic words to make a sunny day 
Magic words to make a rain cloud go away
Sure I know but anyway
It’s still magic  how you say 

Those magic words today
And I woke up feeling kind of blue today
It goes that way some days, some rainy days
Just one thing I can do, I turn to you
Turn to you, for...

Those magic words to take my blues away 
Magic words to make my worries fade today
Sure I know but anyway
It’s still magic  how you say 
Those magic words today

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

Although I am getting filthy rich doing these pieces—I made 60 bucks just last month—I hope you’ll consider supporting this habit by becoming a paid subscriber.

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THE HOUSE IS QUIET TODAY, as it usually is.

Briah is under her headphones, listening to a lecture on medicine or health or physics. This evening I’ll get a synopsis in small words.

To fight off a natural tendency toward inertia, I’m dividing what little focus I can muster between cutting a block print, playing ham-fisted piano, and reading a John Sanford thriller, a time-waster I justify to myself because he writes (I tell myself) great dialog. It ain’t literature but it ain’t exactly Mickey Spillane either. (Note to self: check the library for Mickey Spillane.)

And writing this.

SO AWHILE BACK, hoping for ideas on how to handle all this idle time, I wrote to several far-flung contemporaries asking how they dealt with all the leisure time suddenly on their hands. One answered that he was taking saxophone lessons. (And you practice all day?) Another was traveling. (But what then, after you get home?) One was flipping auctioned houses. (Where do you get the energy for that?) Another skirted the issue altogether by simply dying.

I guess what I was really asking them and asking myself was this: after so many years parenting and grand-parenting what will give interest and flavor and value to all these newly available hours? It’s no accident that I, a former literature student, have forgotten every crystalline line of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock but can recite by heart Scuppers, the Sailor Dog.

But what now?

So, one thing I do is write and record these little songs, and tell these little stories, and pester my friends with them. As they say, it keeps me out of trouble.

Here’s Little Boys, Little Girls. Why walk when you can run?

Little Boys, Little Girls

Little boys, little girls
Why walk when you can run
Little boys with little girls
Like puppies in the sun
  
  See their little mouths moving
  & the words go up like butterflies
  That old bittersweet music
  How it gets me, every time
                   
    Little boys and little girls
    Little boys and little girls
    In this whole wide blessed world
    Little boys and little girls

Little boys, little girls
Going 2 by 2 by 2
Little boys with little girls
Just like me & just like you

  Hide go seek, close your eyes 
  And a screen door bangs shut
  Now I can hear them in the tall grass
  Laughing, and the birds fly up

See their little hands waving
Bye bye, bye bye
Won’t you smile for the nice man?
Smile, babies, smile

    Little boys, little girls
    Little boys, little girls
    In this whole wide blessed world
    Little boys & little girls

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

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MY OLD MAN WAS A BLUE-COLLAR WORKER and his hands told that story. After a lifetime’s struggle with wood and steel and grease, his hands were scarred and fissured, with knuckles swollen practically out of the skin. In the winters, when the exposed flesh split open, he puttied the raw seams with crazy glue. At church, his hands didn’t match his Sunday clothes, and he didn’t offer to shake hands with the dentists and accountants and salesmen with their soft white fingers.

Over the years, he had done and been whatever was required. He’d been a gas station attendant, a builder, a mechanic, and a tool-and-die maker, among other things. In fact, as he reached retirement from Delco Motors, he began assembling in the basement on Lonsdale all the precision tools and springs and gears for one last vocation: clock repair.

But right on the heels of retirement came the first stroke and, not long after that, another, leaving him slumped and scowling, lopsided in a chair by the window. When the ancient grandfather clock in the living room gave a metallic clunk and wouldn’t budge another minute, the old man could only shake his head and grouse that nothing lasts any more. We all knew better than to mention the workshop with a thousand widgets in the basement.

Finally, in one last betrayal, his workman’s hands developed late-onset rheumatoid arthritis that twisted the fingers into knots. At the nursing home at the end, he couldn’t operate the TV remote control, so it went in a drawer with his reading glasses and his copy of the letters of St. Paul. And since he couldn’t answer the bedside telephone, or wouldn’t, or both, the nurses took it away. His hands, useless, lay on top of the sheet.

§

Perhaps I should apologize—today’s tune and my little rambling have only this to connect them: they’ve both been on my mind. The song My Old Man’s Hands, which I’ve been working on—taking it out, putting it away, taking it out again—is nowhere near finished. Some day, maybe.

Room with a Bath is a tune that happened in the meantime.

[Some of you may recognize the photo, a corner of the Gates Hotel Annex in White River Junction, VT. where the rooms proudly advertised Hot Cold Water, $1, Newly Furnished. A class joint.]

Room with a Bath (click to play)

Room with a bath, room with a view
Little tin hot plate for that Dinty Moore stew
Hear the pipes beat a rhythm when the furnace kicks on
She only said, So long
And goodbye is so, so long

You read about Napoleon, such a proud little man
Little round belly, those little white hands
She might not have meant it, or you took it all wrong
She only said, So long
And goodbye is so, so long

At the market down on Fremont a real nice Pakistani girl
Keeps every postcard from her home, across the world
So many colors, fading so long
She only said, So long
And goodbye is so, so long

So you sit by the window, watching limos in the rain
Probably too late now to dial her up again
Dawn before you know it, and you hum your little song
She only said, So long
And goodbye is so, so long

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

TO BE HONEST WITH YOU (you’ll have to take my word on that) I never expected to be doing this—writing these prose snippets and recording these little tunes of mine—for so long. Back in February of ‘25, I gave it a month or two, maybe six, tops.

And for that reason, I was a little hesitant about promoting it too aggressively or pressing those of you in the cheap seats to pony up for a paid subscription.

But it has been over a year, with another full year’s worth of planned Soundbytes! After that, who knows? I’m starting to feel a little itch to return to photography or pottery, maybe a little sculpture. I might even break out that watercolor set and pretend I can paint.

Meantime, I’m asking again for your support for my little enterprise here in any way you can manage. A comment now and then is definitely nice, or even a share with a friend or two to help me reach new folks, or—best yet—a paid subscription for the coming year. True, I’m not much of a salesman. In fact, whether you’re paid or unpaid, I’ll send these little posts along, although I may have a little perk or two in mind for paid subscribers.

So, yes, please think of it as a tip in the jar for that struggling musician on the stool, down on his uppers but singing his heart out and telling little stories partly for the joy of it and partly, to be honest, for the moola in the tip jar, such as it is.

SOPHOMORE YEAR AT OAKWOOD HIGH SCHOOL, I wrote a long meandering poem about a boy strolling with his grandfather on a secluded beach and discovering the elusive meaning of Life (which I have since forgotten). The poem, in a style somewhere between e. e. cummings and Dylan Thomas, or at least aiming for that, was typed on my grandfather’s ancient Remington with a T that floated above the line and an O that had to be struck repeatedly to make any impression at all. Improbably, the piece was accepted for publication after only six or seven rejections. The pay, from a Sunday newspaper supplement called Words with Wings, was a contributor’s copy. (This was the usual pay during all the years I wrote poetry. Once, for a poem published in the venerable Poetry Magazine, I was paid 45 dollars! I bought a tennis racket.)

When I showed up at my high school English teacher’s house with that first acceptance letter and a copy of the poem, she read both documents soberly, squinting and pursing her lips a good bit, nodded, and served me a cup of tea and a thin slice of stale pound cake.

I myself am a poet, she told me and smiled sadly. However, I have never published my work.

I made a mental note to begin referring to my poems as my work, and considered offering her the address of Words with Wings and explaining about the stamped-self-addressed envelope system, but I instead I went with: Well, thanks for the cake.

You should know, she went on, that only three poets in the United States are able to make a living from their poetry.

Three? I said.

Three, she said. Tops.

I don’t know how she came up with the number three. At the time, I suspected that she just made it up and that she would not have mentioned it at all if my poem had been better, with T’s at the correct level and darker O’s.

But that number, three, haunted me for years. I thought of it every time I read that such-and-such poet taught at such-and-such college. Did that count as making a living as a poet? I thought of it every time I received a mimeographed acceptance letter congratulating me and promising a contributor’s copy. I thought of it a lot when I worked as a cobbler or bookstore clerk or night janitor or shoe salesman. I thought of it especially when my Poetry Magazine tennis racket was stolen out of the back of my truck.

§

“Cherry Lane” started as a poem in the lofty manner of Words with Wings, finally threw in the towel, and settled for becoming a song. It happens.

Cherry Lane (click to play)

I’ll go on before you 
Air the old place out
The garden might be overgrown
A bit by now
But when I see you coming
Down the cherry lane
I’ll come out to meet you, babe
Bring you home again

Here we saved up sunny days
Treasures every one
So throw the curtains open now
And welcome in the sun 
But nothing could be sweeter
Than right after the rain
I’ll come out to greet you, babe
Bring you home again

We’ll find our autumn apples
Fallen in the grass
Maybe you can talk me into
Trying one at last
So when I see you coming
Down the cherry lane
I’ll come right out to greet you, babe
Bring you home again

And when I see you coming
Down the cherry lane
I’ll come right out to meet you, babe
Bring you home again
I’ll come out to meet you, babe
Down the cherry lane

So I’ll go on before you 
Air the old place out
Garden might be overgrown
A bit by now
But when I see you coming
Down the cherry lane 
I’ll come out to meet you, babe
Bring you home again
I’ll come out to greet you, babe
Down the cherry lane

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with the late Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction, with poet Marv Klassen-Landis. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

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EVERY SONG I’VE EVER WRITTEN was, at the time, the best song yet. For an hour or a day, sometimes a week. How often has Briah heard me announce that I’ve just written my best song ever? Some times she’ll even agree with me, under duress.

Some of those best-ever tunes continue to tickle me for a while for some reason, others shuffle into to a stack of works in process, and some just drop straight into the trash. Often, since I have to rely on memory and can’t read a note of music, I can’t quite recall the original melody a couple days later or can’t hear what seemed so promising to begin with. Did I write that? Mmmm. Trash.

The tune my friends seem to consider my best was written many years ago, when I didn’t even own a guitar. The song emerged from a snowed-in weekend in a motel in Burlington, Vermont, just me and my upright bass and a stack of artificial logs filched from the maid’s cart.

Dead simple and heartfelt, that tune followed me over the years through a number of short-lived bands. Usually the vocal was handled by a woman, even though the lyrics described a man’s hopes and heartaches. In part, I think women sang it because they were more comfortable with the intimacy of it, and in part just because the tune required a better and more confident voice than mine. The only time I heard a man sing it, he somehow jumped it up to a bluegrass rhythm, laid on some twangy guitar, and got ‘er done in half the time.

But today’s song is not that song. Today’s song is about that next song, tomorrow’s song, the one that will be my best song ever.

My masterpiece, I’m sure of it.

My Masterpiece (click to play)

     Here outside my window, a rainy day today
    Even Mr. Chickadee got nothing bright to say
    I might’ve had a hope or two, nothing quite begun
    But my masterpiece can wait for the sun  

My masterpiece of loss and luck and
Sweet love back for more
My masterpiece I hoped I might’ve
Written long before
My masterpiece for four hands
String and horns galore
Can wait a little more 

My masterpiece to find the words
For all I got to say
My masterpiece I meant to write
Well, just yesterday
My masterpiece to show the world now
What it’s all been for
Can wait a little more     

    Here outside my window, chilly gray old day
    Might owe you a letter but there’s really no news today
    If I put my back to it, I guess something could get done
    While my masterpiece’ll wait for the sun  

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Reviewand other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

Tales from Then and Soundbytes are reader-supported publications. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Every little bit helps

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AT MY HIGH SCHOOL GIRLFRIEND’S HOUSE I used to get roped into blackjack and poker at the dining room table, chaperoned by her grandmother. I might have preferred an evening at the drive-in or, better yet, at a favorite necking spot overlooking the golf course, but I was usually flat broke and anyway only got the use of my old man’s Oldsmobile once a month and only until 10 pm. (After 10, the next month’s car privilege was forfeited, the back door was locked, and I slept folded in the back seat of the car, no matter the weather. Occasionally, it was worth it.)

Em’s family was devoutly Catholic, with dried palm fronds scotch-taped over paintings of the sacred heart of Jesus. Most nights, her old man was barricaded behind a newspaper with a dry martini, two olives. Her mother was grim and disappointed; she clearly had better things to do than play games. A younger sister, with bright red hair and more freckles than space between, found excuses to wander through the room and drop sarcastic comments.

But the widowed grandmother, our self-appointed chaperone, was an avid player and something of a card sharp. Not that we were much competition. Em would have preferred to be sneaking Tareytons in the alley, and I was distracted by toxic levels of testosterone. Anyway, cards were easier than conversation, so we played.

The old woman had no patience for dawdling players, certainly not for an infatuated teenage boy ogling her granddaughters and struggling to keep his cards off the floor. So, if I dragged my feet, trying to remember which was higher, a straight or a flush, she would bark: Play ‘em or lay ‘em! Or if I couldn’t decide whether to hit or stand on 16, she’d growl: Hold ‘em or fold ‘em! You in or out? Or if I sneaked peeks at the younger sister in her pjs and lost track of my turn, the old woman would simmer and snap: Put up or shut up!

In any case, as the old woman might have predicted, I never amounted to any kind of gambler, in life or love—so many rules!—but those commands from Em’s militant card-sharp grandmother eventually made it into the song Blackjack, Mack. I can’t sing it without drifting back to playing cards around the dining room table in that old house behind the Rose of Sharon hedge. Any fool would bet his life/ holding cards like these.

Blackjack, Mack (click to play)

My baby plays her games                  
And that’s alright by me                            
Bless her heart, she tries so hard                 
To make a gambler of me 

   This is blackjack, Mack,   
   You put up or shut up
   Blackjack, Mack       
   And it’s my deal now
 
   Playing blackjack, Mack,   
   You hold ‘em or fold ‘em                    
   Play ‘em or lay ‘em           
   You in or out?
     
No need to cut the cards
Nothin’ but nothin’ up my sleeve
And that’s alright by me           
That’s alright by me

   This is blackjack, Mack…

Any fool would bet his life
Holding cards like these
And that’s just right by me    
And that’s just right by me

   This is blackjack, Mack…

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

I FIRST BEGAN SENDING OUT SOUNDBYTES, a series of brief commentaries/ reminiscences with accompanying original tunes, back in March of ‘25. At the time, I thought of it as a sort of short-term musical follow-up to the Substack short stories collected in Sun Tea, a Kindle eBook available at your friendly neighborhood purveyor of everything under the sun, Amazon.com.

Initially, I had just four or five tunes in mind, especially Four-Minute Mile and Small Flame. Just a little diversion to tide me over between projects. But one thing led to another, as things do, and I kept writing little essays and recording tunes, and even gained a few paid subscribers along the way. Looking ahead, I find that I have finished and scheduled posts through next April so far, woo hoo. Granted, I have only a slightly larger audience than I started with, but I only intended this for friends and family, so I can’t grouse too much.

For all this, I’m grateful first to my patient wife, who has learned how to point out when a piece sucks but to do it so diplomatically I can almost take it as a compliment. And I’m grateful to those of you who have read this far and send me your occasional comments and even, now and then, pony up for a paid subscription, always appreciated.

Pushing 78 (yikes!) I’m mostly just grateful for a chance to watch the bluebirds out the back window, grateful to go walking in the morning while the air is still cool, grateful to ride my little e-bike around town to the great amusement of my contemporaries, and grateful, first and foremost, to have this excuse to play with words and music a little longer and thus avoid mowing the lawn.

Abrazos.

Phil

A RETIRED FRIEND REPORTS on his ongoing misadventures with the medical cartel, as he puts it.

He is elderly, yes, but relatively healthy. Relatively being the key word. That is, he can nearly touch his toes and straighten up afterward, eventually. He gets the recommended eight hours of sleep, not counting four or five trips to the bathroom. Unlike many of his potbellied compatriots, he can wear the same sized pants he wore thirty years ago (in fact, they are the same pants).

Healthy or no, he’s not reluctant to spell out his various maladies to me, in detail. In fact, he has the documentation right at hand, alphabetized and sorted by condition, although I’m pretty sure he mispronounces the medical terminology intentionally to show his disdain for the diagnoses. Spell it, I say over the phone. You got a hearing problem now? he shouts.

The biggest change he notices is that 14-year-old physicians are quicker now to dismiss his complaints unless he presses the point and keeps pressing it. A knee that pops and smarts and gives out on him? Well, um, sir, that is to be expected, perhaps, possibly, considering your…um…age, realistically, no offense, calm down.

To be fair, my friend draws a parallel with his own admitted reluctance to put expensive new Goodyear radials on his rusty old Volvo that leaks oil and backfires at stoplights and pulls to the left, no matter how many times he gets the bozos at Tire City to align the wheels. Maybe re-treads this time. But hey, after all, an old car: what can you expect?

Until this year, he says, my doc was an old geezer with a comb-over and a pocket protector and egg yolk on his tie. I could talk to him, I could bum a cigarette. This new kid walks around with a bicycle clip on his pants and types on his phone with his thumbs. It’s embarrassing. I asked him if there were any grown-up doctors in the office, and he asked me if I could name the president. I said Herbert Hoover, which he wrote down. What’re you going to do?

Francis and the Tomcat (click to play)

Francis & the tomcat stare out in the yard     
Chickadee & bluejay, so close, so far
I’ll sweep out the pantry & put the kettle on
You go get your beauty sleep before the sunlight’s gone    
I hear the clock tick, and a fly on the glass
Feels like forever but gone so fast, so damn fast     

Got a pocketful of feathers, got a mouthful of sky
Don’t trust my appetites, & I’m afraid to fly
Once I prayed for miracles, the fire & the flood
Now I’m glad to settle for the burning in the blood
And I see myself in that old tomcat’s eye
Waving my fist at the sky, at the sky

Francis & the tomcat share a morning tea
Sweet cream for his holiness & a biscuit for me
And all the pretty fliers in blue & gray & brown
A thousand little wishes going round & round & round
Here we are together this side of the glass
We might be angels at last

Francis oh Francis, go repair my house
Safe for brother peacock, safe for sister mouse
Francis & the tomcat stare out in the yard
Chickadee & bluejay, so close, so far

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

ACCORDING TO THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (and they should know) the life expectancy in 2050 will reach a smidge over 79. For men, of course; women soldier on.

This might be encouraging to some of you, less so to others. Unfortunately for me, I’ll reach 79 long before 2050 rolls around, so I need to take some additional steps right away to beat the curve even though people assure me all the time that I look far younger than my years. Appearances not withstanding, I suspect that my body knows how old it is.

So, for a start I resolve to walk every day, even when there is not a donut shop on the route, or even when said donut shop is closed for renovations, damn it. I will shoot for 10,000 steps, or possibly 7000, a nice round number that has a healthy ring to it, but I will not be a stickler about it, since old fogies tend to be sticklers, known for it, and I’m not going there. Flexibility and all.

Moving on: when my wife lectures harangues badgers talks to me about the benefits of leafy greens such as kale, spinach, and other weeds in that category, I will not make tasteless jokes in a Bill Cosby voice, which nobody finds funny any more. Also, having been raised in Dayton, Ohio, I will in fact swallow those otherwise-compost items when served them, clean my plate, every bite, even without the incentive of hamburgers, corn dogs, or Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks.

By the time the men in my family reached my current age they tended to wear wife-beaters and baggy slacks belted just under the nipples. Therefore, I will wear shorts (I have the knees for it, Briah assures me) and Hawaiian shirts with hula dancers and ukuleles. Since when has immaturity been the exclusive domain of the young?

Summing up: by the faithful employment of exercise, salads, snappy wardrobe, and denial, I intend to put off worrying about all this for several years, minimum, maybe longer. If I’m still around. And remember it.

§

Limousine Driver imagines the story of an elderly chauffeur I spotted years ago under the porte cochère outside the Hopkins Center in Hanover, New Hampshire. He wore a bowtie and a military cap with gold braid on the visor, and he killed the time flicking a rag over the bumper of a powder-blue Lincoln Town Car. He may have been about the age I am now.

It’s not how far you get, it’s how you get there. He got there in a stretch limo.

Limousine Driver

The limousine driver knew Elvis
& Elvis could count him a friend
The limousine driver keeps on the visor 
A Christmas card old Elvis sent
He knows every song and he sings along while he
Watches the afternoon rain
He washed this old Lincoln just yesterday
& he’ll wash it tomorrow again

And one quick Pall Mall would be some kind of fine
& a coffee, two sugars, to go
But despite all that perfume the old lady wears
One sniff & she’s certain to know

    Send a limo for Elvis, send us a driver he knows
    A limo for Elvis, Elvis is late for the show

Jane writes from Memphis, she’s met a new guy
He seems to be married somewhat
But this one’s the real one, they’re thinking of traveling
To places she always dreamt of
It ain’t growing old that’ll get you, she says,
It’s growing tired of life
Somebody’s mistress, somebody’s joke
Somebody’s second-hand wife

Nobody promised you blush on the rose
Nobody lied to your face
Maybe a fib or two, maybe some kidding you
Counted on anyway

    Send a limo for Elvis, send us a driver he knows
    A limo for Elvis, Elvis is late for the show

The limousine driver says yes ma’am yes
Won’t you watch that fine hairdo please
Nap if you’d like to, I’ll be sure to wake you
You’re perfectly safe now with me
I may be only your driver
But Elvis could count me a friend
How many drivers have right on their visor
A Christmas card old Elvis sent?

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

A FEW WEEKS AGO IN THIS SPACE I wrote about taking a bachelor pad (AKA apartment) of my own after a long failed marriage, and eventually connecting with the woman whose energy and enthusiasm would casually upend everything.

But in those summer and fall months before we met, while I was still hauling my upright bass up the steep stairs to my little garret under the eaves, I imagined the shape my new life might take there—the lapsed poet, the would-be musician—what I would do, where I would go, who I would meet. At the same time, life seemed both full of promise and, I discovered, a little bleak. After years of bellyaching and dreaming, I found myself by turns exhilarated and exhausted.

In this little song, written during that brief interval before Briah arrived and filled half the closet and spread her papers out on the bedroom floor (!), I imagined in my customarily melodramatic fashion the progression of the seasons of my life beyond my little apartment—the blue jays of summer, the church bells of fall, the seasons spinning cinematically like a scene in which the camera rotates around two lovers who dance gracefully, weightlessly, and never tromp on one another’s toes.

Of course, in the scene in my little movie, I was dancing alone. And I wondered what it might be like to be lucky in love.

❦

I once burned a few copies of a little CD of original songs, planning to sell them at gigs or give them to friends, and entitled it Lucky in Love, including a version of this tune with a vocal that was comically flat. I sold one or two, half dozen tops, gave a couple away, and used a few as coasters. The image above is the CD cover, an old snapshot of my brother putting the moves on the next door neighbor, who wasn’t having any of it.

Lucky in Love (click to play)

The sweet summer breeze
Whispers in the trees
Sunny days & freight trains
Blue jay's song
I've been away so long

Have you been lucky in love?
Was ever luck enough?
Autumn breeze & falling leaves
Church bell's song
I've been away so long

    Lovers come & go
    Always other lovers
    Lovers come & go      

The first snowflakes fall
Soon they'll hide it all
Winter wind come whispering
The ice man's song
I've been away so long

Have you been lucky in love?
Was ever luck enough?
Spring nights, candlelight
Silence and the song
I've been away too long

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

MY FIRST ACTUAL DANCE, not counting jitterbug and foxtrot lessons following Health/Sex Education classes at the YMCA, was at Central Christian Church after an evening of Bible study. I had prepared for the occasion by inventing a snappy dance-step combining the Twist and the Mashed Potato. Alone under the attic eaves of my parents’ house, I considered this a pretty impressive move, let me tell you, a little like patting your head and rubbing your belly and hopping from foot to foot. Go ahead, try it.

But under Kathy McNulty’s skeptical eye it lapsed rapidly into straight-forward running in place. Soon out of breath and soaked in flop sweat, I had to retreat to a folding chair with most of the other boys, watching the flock of girls banking and gliding under the crepe paper streamers.

For my second and last dance, my mother drove me to pick up Ann Duttweiler, a girl from one of the wealthy families up the hill. I had my own driver’s license by that time, but had already hit a Slow Watch for Children sign, our neighbor’s crabapple tree, and an insurance building, and my folks refused to loan me the car. Accidentally, my mother drove up to the servants’ entrance behind my date’s house, so I had to pick my way through the hedge in the side yard to ring the doorbell.

The rest of the night went pretty much like the first, with me in a bolo tie and sport coat, parked on a bench, and my date huddled with a conspiracy of girls in gowns and wrist corsages, shooting scorn at the bench of crows.

These days, Briah and I occasionally dance a little in the living room, with me lumbering from side to side and Briah trying to dodge my feet. I stick to the box step, counting under my breath, and am no more graceful than I was all those years ago, but now at least I get to go home with my date.

What Do You See in Me? (click to play)

She was kinda pretty, he was sorta short   
Neither had a clue what a dance floor’s for
But he could do the box step, and that was kinda sweet
She watched the ceiling, he watched her feet
          
She said her sisters all married young
He said his mother passed last month
She shared a bath at the end of the hall
And then when she smiled he felt ten feet tall

     Why oh why
     What do you see in me, in me    
     Why oh why
     What do you see in me 

She dreamed of traveling to Paris and Rome
He’d been to Birmingham, came back home
If she’d like a picnic, he’d borrow a car
On the fire escape later, they counted the stars
                                                                         
They did the dishes, she washed, he dried
She played her ukulele, then turned off the lights
He held his breath, she said her prayers
And a tomcat cried all night on the stairs

     Why oh why
     What do you see in me, in me    
     Why oh why
     What do you see in me

You try a trench coat, me a beret and
We’ll go take a stroll if it ever stops raining
We’ll ride the ferry, we’ll feed the birds
We’ll speak Italian like we know all the words

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Reviewand other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisey.

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JUST PAST THE LITTLE HOUSE the bank and I owned in Lynchburg, Virginia, the pavement petered out and a mound of gravel and kudzu blocked the way. Beyond that, I could make out through the trees a tar-paper shack and the remains of a pickup stranded on cement blocks. And only a few yards beyond that, a cliff fell straight down to the Norfolk Southern tracks and the muddy James River far below. Naturally nosy, I tried to gets a little closer with my trusty Minolta. But a pair of yellow-eyed dogs moseyed out and tilted their heads at me, and I backpedalled to my house.

The nearest bus stop, four or five long blocks away, was a considerable trek for the old woman who lived back there with her dogs. Once, having just reached the end of the pavement with a bag of groceries and a full bladder, she had to squat down there in front of our house and relieve herself on the street while her hounds came bounding happily through the woods and welcomed her home.

Our old clapboard house wasn’t much, with its termites and banging radiators and mud-room slowly collapsing into the alley, but we probably didn’t deserve our luck to have it. And if I didn’t yet understand why that was so, I nevertheless slunk away from the window, sheepish for having spotted her, ashamed of my youth and health and the idle leisure to dawdle by the window, dreaming up poems that would one day earn me enough money to buy a tennis racket and a can of balls.

❧

Mockingbird is set there and then, at the end of Dearing Street in Lynchburg, Virginia. And yes, Carolina scans better than Lynchburg, but as my friend Mike says I am allowed license in these matters, or at least I claim it.

[The image above, while not a mockingbird, is a bird of some fashion, possibly a crow. It was shot by an old friend, who is apparently too busy taking photos to write letters, for crying out loud.]

Mockingbird [click to play]

Down in Carolina, summer’s in the air
Winter’s just a rumor to folks down there
Say your prayers and go to sleep or Old Man Winter’s 
Gonna get you, gonna get you

    Well, once I had a little house with honeysuckle vines
    Cottonwoods dropping cotton on laundry on the line
    Copperhead, good morning, ain’t this sunshine fine        
    This morning

You know mockingbird’s a happy chap, and you might be too
If any old love song was all the same to you
Sometimes I wonder, have I been a mockingbird too? 
Have you?

    Or just another old crow, preening in the shade
    Dreaming of the another fine Carolina day
    Seems to me I better be flying south real soon
    With you

Down in Carolina, summer’s in the air
Winter’s just a rumor to folk down there
 I don't remember yesterday, today it’s going to rain

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Reviewand other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

I HAVE TO ADMIT that I haven’t been all that savvy in my marketing of these little Substack recordings and reminiscences.

Whether you look forward to them or merely tolerate them, whether you save them for later or delete them unread, whether you are a paid or free subscriber—or none of the above—I continue to write and record them and send them out.

Yes, it’s first and foremost a labor of love, but your support—whether by sharing these Soundbytes with friends or by sending me appreciative comments or by sharing your own experiences or even by shelling out a few bucks to support the cause—they all mean the world to me.

Look for Mockingbird tomorrow. And if you like it and haven’t become a paid subscriber yet, or just feel the urge to re-up, please consider it. Or just hit the button below right now.

See you tomorrow.

Phil

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AFTER THE INITIAL THRILL of independence in my tiny top-of-the-stairs under-the-eaves apartment, I began to feel a little lonely. Me and my upright bass, plus a narrow window slot higher than eye level, through which I could see only sky and the occasional starling kiting against the wind. Not that I read a lot of meaning into the image.

At fifty, I was on my own for the first time since sophomore year in college. My own bed, my own stool in front of my own place-setting on my own counter, my own hook for my coat, my own jar marked Tea, even my own tiny television—all things were new and possible.

After a couple weeks of keeping the bed made and the mug rinsed, I called an old friend, the late Laurianne Jordan, and mentioned casually that I wouldn’t object to a little company now and then, if she happened to know someone. No expectations, no pressure. Conversation, maybe. A coffee, possibly.

Is the boy getting lonely? she said.

Couldn’t be happier, I said. Just made myself a cup of tea.

Good job, she said.

It just so happened that Laurianne’s little band was practicing that afternoon at the guitarist’s sister’s house. The sister was upstairs painting a bedroom.

And I think you might like her, Laurianne said.

The bedroom painter, it developed, was newly single, just getting used to her own independence after the collapse of a long marriage, and not in the market for another project.

So it took a little coaxing. But she thought it over and eventually conceded to Laurianne: Maybe. Just for coffee. But what if we like each other?

Laurianne said, Oh, you will

I first trotted out this tune with my old friend Byron at his outdoor concert series in New Hampshire, but under the pressure of a staring audience I totally blanked on some of the words and one of the chords in the chorus and had to mumble and mute the guitar while Byron tried not to laugh. Occasionally over the years Laurianne and I gave it a go at the Canoe Club in Hanover, but unfortunately her voice was a little too sweetly refined for the song and she could never quite get the feel of droppin’ the g’s from -ing words. And when she sang the word ain’t, you somehow got the impression it was grammatically correct after all, or should have been.

For that bedroom painter, my wife of many years now: Used to You.

Used to You [click to play]

Ain’t I used to you,      
Old brown shoes for you too, by now     
And I’m old hat for you, ain’t you that for me 
Too, by now  

    Ain’t I used to you     
    Ain’t I used to you by now
    But ooh how you do what you do
    Ain’t I used to you

Got no head for bidness, no stick­to­itiveness 
The money don’t stay but away
Usually wound up late for the roundup 
Yippy­ki­yippy­ki­yay
And look at you now, look at me how I
Look at you, I’m looking at you, and I’m
Seeing double, an old married couple, me and you

Now scooch over baby, I’m pooped to the bone 
From my day out clowning on the telephone 
Dollar by dollar, hour by day
And spring slips away
Then something real simple on the edge of my eye 
You put down your book, you stretch and you sigh 
And you whisper “Baby,” and the day starts again 
Now now, now now
Ain’t I used to you,      
Old brown shoes for you too, by now     
And I’m old hat for you, ain’t you that for me 
Too, by now  

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

Thanks for reading & listening! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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MY OLD MAN AND I ONCE PLAYED PIG to a draw, stalled after a half hour at P.

A few summers before, my old man had nailed a basketball hoop to the garage. In that way, when I was dawdling in my room on nice summer days pretending to be e. e. cummings by pecking out random words on my old Smith Corona, my mother could shoo me out of the house to shoot baskets. (My typing may have been a little hard to listen to. After each letter I had to pause and search out the next, then pry the jammed letters apart.)

Faced with the prospect of either trimming the boxwood or cleaning out the gutters, my old man laced up the black hightop gym shoes he used for wading in creeks to seine for crawdads, stripped off his shirt down to a wife-beater, and challenged me to a game of PIG.

A reputed former athlete who once chucked the javelin for Stivers High School, he now windmilled his arms in the prescribed fashion to limber up, ran briefly in place, then leaned against the garage for a minute, either to stretch his leg muscles or to keep from falling down, dizzy.

First, he thought I should learn how to confound my opponent by dribbling behind my back, and he attempted to demonstrate, but my brother’s basketball had a leak and refused to bounce. So we took a break to locate the bicycle pump, which turned out to lack the needle accessory needed to inflate the ball. Instead he topped off the tires of all the bicycles in the garage, and finally drove a nail into the wall where he hung the pump. I could see him looking around hopefully for other tools to hang, but my mother yelled from the kitchen window, asking how her two big-time athletes were doing. He sighed and picked up the basketball.

In the game of PIG, one player executes a difficult shot—maybe a sweeping hook shot or an eyes-closed behind-the-back shot or a long-distance shot from behind the hedge halfway down the driveway and banked off the neighbor’s awning—and the other player has to mimic it. Failure to repeat the shot earns the shooter a letter. First to spell out Pig, loses.

I started with a two-handed underhand lob from between my legs, but missed, bouncing off the rim. My old man demonstrated his much-touted specialty, a leaping hook shot, but missed everything— rim, backboard, and garage. I attempted a shot I had seen at recess, slamming the ball down so hard it would bounce up to the basket, but the ball just landed with a soggy splat and rolled into the roses. Next turn, my old man paced off the regulation 15 feet to an imaginary foul line, and we took turns missing. Finally he stood on tip toes directly under the basket and nudged the ball over the rim. I tried the same shot and missed. P! he yelled. With no real hope of success, I heaved the ball over my shoulder, facing away from the basket, and the ball swooshed cleanly through the rim. He tried the same and threw the ball onto the garage roof. P! I yelled.

Tie score. And that’s where we left it. It turned out that the ivy on the chimney needed my old man’s attention, and I had a side yard that needed mowing with our old push mower, more of a workout than any ten afternoons of trick shots. So, with some relief we got to our chores.

At supper, my mother wanted to know who had won, and my old man said he had taken it easy on the kid. Before I could object he immediately launched into mumbling his usual mealtime prayer, so we all looked down at our laps and moved our lips along with him.

So, does the song below, Before We Fall, have anything to do with the text above? Nothing at all. Except that for my 2¢ the song says all I wanted it to say and needs no particular preface, and ditto for the text.

And since the song and the text are unrelated, I tossed in a random photo I like, for the same price. The charmer on the right is my brother.

Before We Fall (clicks to play)

Neon blue, we'll stop awhile tonight       
After miles of Jesus radio  
Where's the harm in warming for the night
Pilgrims in a storm, and miles to go

   No room service after ten, no long distance calls at all
   Now we might tell a lie or two
   Before we fall                             

There’s a tomcat on the landing, he could use a tail
Though he cannot hold a tune
Someone’s working up fried onions, by the smell of it
Down the hallway in a hotplate room

   And I only know this one old prayer by heart, that’s all
   I might say it anyway
   Before we fall

Snow makes the city quiet this late
Till the plows come around
I can't sleep 'cause you're calling  in your dreams
And that’s one sad little sound

   Can’t help wondering what you dream about, do you dream of us at all?
   Guess we tell a lie or two
   Before we fall
   No room service after ten, this black and white tv don't work at all
   And we might tell a lie or two
   Before we fall    

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

Thanks for reading & listening! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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FAMILY STORIES CAN BE SLIPPERY, passed down the line and goosed in friendly fashion along the way by every teller.

As the story goes (that is, as it reached me) my grandmother Mabel Kline sailed via steamer to the U.S. in the late 19th century from the disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine. According to my old man, who should have known, Mabel spoke German as a girl and slipped straight into redneck, skipping over correct English. Beyond that, the story goes aground. Possibly in a little town north of Cincinnati, she met and married a terse young lumber yard laborer who didn’t mind her lack of conversational skills. In fact, although I once lived under her reign in the little shotgun house on Wyoming Street, I can’t remember her having much to say for herself apart from occasionally chasing my grandfather and his stinky corncob pipe out of the house. I can still see her there in her dumpy house dress and tight blue curls, scowling and pointing out the back door while my grandfather slunk outside. Git.

Maybe it was Mabel’s taciturnity that gave the Alsace-Lorraine story wheels. If anyone ever had the temerity to repeat the story to her face, she never to my knowledge bothered to correct it. She was stern and buttoned-up right to the chin and not particularly given to pointless conversation. When I lived there, I stayed out from underfoot and mainly watched her go about her business cranking wet laundry through the mangle, striking wooden matches to light the gas stove, scrubbing pots in the pump-fed sink, ironing my grandfather’s identical pairs of khakis.

And making grape jelly. This part of the story, and the song, is true.

Yes, I do know the broad actual outlines of Mabel’s life, her parents and grandparents and 10 siblings, the towns, the births, the deaths. It’s a life that deserves the respect of accuracy. And maybe one day I’ll tell it.

But for me, now, it’s about the grape jelly.

Grapes Today (click to play)

   Grapes today, tomorrow grape jelly   
   So ripe on the vine, it’s time for jelly   
   Grapes today, tomorrow grape jelly   
   Give us our daily bread and spread it with jelly   

The old woman stirs all day, boiling ‘em down
But the sugar turns hard & sharp, like glass in your mouth
May as well hold your tongue, she’ll never hear
While the old lady stirs the pot, stirs the years

Hamburg by steamer, barely a teen
German to redneck, they’ll say, no English in between
Little round wireless specs and tight yellow curls
Little old woman in an old little girl

Took her sweet time, put three kids on the floor
One for Ladies Apparel, two for the European war
And Buddy just strummed that old round-back mandolin
Smoked his pipe on the porch till she made him come in

Now if ants smell sugar, you'll have your share of ‘em
But a pan of boiling water, that’ll take care of ‘em
By God grapes today, tomorrow grape jelly
Say grace then, amen, and pass the jelly

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

MOST OF THE SONGS IN THIS SERIES have at least a little truth behind them. Often it’s only a glimpse of a memory, maybe a regret, even an apology—probably too little too late. Did that really happen? Sometimes, after so many tellings, I’m not even sure myself.

Not that factual truth, if I’m honest, ever had all that much to do with most of these tunes in the first place. Songs about my first true flame or my grandmother Minnie Belle or my twin great-uncles Willie and Charlie only ever stuck as close to historical fact as it suited the lyric.

So, no, I never knew anyone named Merilee. I certainly never approached a pretty girl who had been abandoned, heartbroken on the dance floor, and talked her into slipping outside for a smoke. In my entire high school career, I went to only one dance. My date Ann Duttweiler fled to the girls’ side of the gym, where she huddled with her friends and giggled; I slunk over to the boys’ side and counted the minutes until my mother came to pick us up.

But really, in those days, I probably lived more in my imagination than in Dayton, Ohio, in my parents’ little brick bungalow with yellow shutters, a half-block from the bus stop and the enormous Dunleavy Plumbing sign. Usually, I was distracted, daydreaming, as my mother liked to point out. And still am.

Merilee, is that your name? Call me what you like tonight, it’s all the same.

Merilee

You are quite a looker 
I am quite alone 
Every guy on the dance floor 
Would like to take you home 
But something left you sad tonight 
Someone let you down 
Untied a promise of forever 

Don't you look so lonesome? 
You need a friend, I’ll bet 
I can do a step or two 
Counting in my head 
I can even listen to you 
If it comes to that 
Don’t need no promise of forever 

See the boy on bass guitar 
He’s a friend of mine 
I could introduce you if you’d 
Just stop crying 
If I can bum a cigarette 
We could step outside, but 
Just that, no promise of forever 

And when you’re tired of trying 
I could walk you home 
Or walk along behind you if you’d 
Rather be alone 
Bet your old man’s waiting up 
To run a third degree 
But not me, and no promise of forever 

   Merilee 
   Is that your name 
   Call me what you like tonight 
   It’s all the same 
   And a goodnight kiss is only this 
   Merilee 
   Is that your name 
   Call me what you like tonight 
   It’s all the same 
   And a goodnight kiss is only this 
   No promise of forever
   No promise of forever
   No promise, Merilee

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.

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Psychology Today: “Introverts seek out and enjoy opportunities for reflection and solitude.”

I HAVE HEARD A NUMBER OF DEFINITIONS OF AN INTROVERT, some sensible, some a little silly. They are often formulated by outgoing types who like to suggest that there is a hidden depth beneath their glossy public surface. They seem to maintain, Yes, I stand here before you all grinning and joking and projecting effortlessly to the back seats, but I am really a shy, thoughtful person once you get to know me.

Maybe so, maybe not. I have my doubts. More likely, a true introvert propped on his hind legs in front of any crowd over three will sweat and sway and stammer and forget everything, possibly including his name. That percussive beat you detect will be his knees, knocking.

For me, a definition of an extrovert that strikes home is one who experiences everything multiple times, as diminishing echoes edited by regret, embarrassment, and doubt until the remaining memory of the event may bear only a passing resemblance to the actual event.

Of course, one of the main problems with this, um, let’s call it a style, is that it gums up the works to the extent that important stuff often goes unsaid, choked off. Speaking only for myself (and who else would I speak for?) I think I more often regret these things left unsaid than all the ignorant, hurtful, unfunny things that escaped me. I need so much time to process and consider and weigh every experience that I’m usually left mute, struggling to formulate a response while the moment sails past.

Among the thousand questions I will always regret having left unspoken are a notable few—for instance, to my first wife: Why on earth did you marry me in the first place? Couldn’t you already see all of this coming? To my old man: What was going through your head that rare and astonishing time you put your arm around my shoulder in the hallway of Central Christian Church after I had strummed Cat in the Cradle in front of the whole congregation? To my cousin Terry, who died before I could ask him: Why didn’t you ever call back? And what did you manage to make of the bitter beginning you were given? To our son Isaiah: Did you have any idea at all how much I envied and feared your joyful recklessness? To my wife Briah who would pooh-pooh the question and deny it forever: Didn’t you ever, if only for a moment now and then, wish you’d married a dentist? (Actually, I’ve asked her this a number of times, but she’s a trooper—she denies it.)

And so many, many more. Meantime, here’s a tune on the subject, just thumped out recently on piano.

[And no, the image above has nothing to do with either the text above or the tune below. In fact, it’s one of our granddaughters, Simone, who was never ever lost for words.]

Was That So Hard to Say (click to play)

You know I’ve been meaning to tell you
Just waiting to find the right time
But the hours slip away
Still so much left to say
I may need a minute more
Steel my nerve a bit before I say

All I keep meaning to tell you
While I’m waiting to find the perfect time
If I haven’t said it yet
Well, you know how I can get
Just need a minute more
Take a breath or two before I say

   You are my everything, my every little thing
   Every minute, every hour of the day 
   My hero, my best friend, and lover by the way
   There, was that so hard to say
   There, was that so hard to say?

Oughta be so easy to tell you
Now, after all this blessed time
Why do I get shy
Damned if I know why
Just need a minute more
Steel my nerve a bit before I say

Philip Singer’s first chapbook, Natives (Chowder Press, Madison, WI) was followed by See Rock City (Gallimaufry Press, Bethesda, MD), poems first published in North American Review, Poetry Magazine, Swanee Review, Yale Review, Southern Poetry Review and other publications too obscure for even the author to remember. He also co-edited the regrettably short-lived New River Review (Radford, Virginia), with poet Charles L. Hayes, and Poetryfish (Norwich, Vermont), an online journal of poetry and fiction. Sun Tea, a serialized memoir first published here on Substack, appeared in 2022, with a couple of afterwords (Hey, kids, wait up!) in the years since.

Singer lives in Virginia with his wife Briah and their little gray wonder-dog, Maisie.