Three little words sit by my doorstep

And here we are, on the final day of NaPoWriMo 2024 when we are asked to write a poem that describes different times in which we’ve heard the same band or piece of music across our lifetime.

I started my day planning something of my own and was going to go off-prompt, but that would mean breaking a sequence at the last link of the chain – which seems silly, and anyway, I can come back to the thing I woke with some other time.

“Everything I Own” by Ken Boothe was one of the very first singles I bought when I started collecting my music back in the mid 1970’s. I love the sentiment of unconditional caring support, and of course the fabulous reggae. It took me many years to discovers that it was a reflective piece Ken wrote about his and his father’s relationship, which hit a whole new pertinency for me, as I felt that disconnect while my own father was alive. When he died, it took me a very long time to listen to the song as, even though there was nothing left unsaid when I felt his last pulse leave his body, it hurt too much, its every beat eating away at my admiration for the man.

Some years after he died and I took a DNA test to assist my family tree research, I found out that there were others who could have called him dad, but he had gone before they could be connected by more than genes.

This week I attended the funeral of an amazing man and friend, his elegies where told with respect and beauty in the same week that I learnt some new amazing family tree news.

It’s still a great song.

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Some songs just won’t let you go.

Clinging to you like ivy, they

Get under your skin, burying themselves deep inside your bones, where, unseen and unfelt, they hide like secreted diamonds waiting to shine.

They wait till you need them, like the eagle needs the open sky, or the rose the kiss of sunshine or like a son needs to hear one man say, “I love you”.

They wait in the chasm those unspoken words carved into the marrow, the very essence of a young boy’s soul.

Sometimes they are like an old friend, whose arms carry the glowing caress of a Caribbean sunset.

Unconditional caring tempos wrap their arms around you and whisper “we’ve got your back Jack” while they invite your heart to dance barefoot below palms on warm wet sand.

The holiday suitcase of harmonies has no space for fears, they are consigned to kindly seek comfort staring at the cold fire grate of a grey, smut-suffocated industrial town.

Magic carpets of rhythms sail high over worries, sheltering you from harm, keeping you warm and free.

At others, they batter and smash your senses, dragging you down to drown in frozen depths of doubt, like a cast overboard slave with chains chiming the cruellest melody .

The finest years I ever knew, shattered between barbed wire notes. No silken voice can suture these bleeding wounds and make the sun rise over Montego bay again.

But this son will rise to amazing days you will never see, and you won’t hear a word he says.

But they will.

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