The Unemployed Musician
There were reasons we shouldn’t be together,
There were reasons we should have stayed apart,
But no reason could ever reason
With the passions brewing in our heart.
She was married to the mayor,
The richest man in our town,
I was an unemployed musician
For whom success had never come around.
She was fifteen years my elder,
Living in a mansion up on the hill;
I was playing guitar in the city park,
Passing around the hat for some coins and bills.
I sang love songs that I had written
About lovers that I never knew;
No one would ever stop to listen -
My notes rode on the winds that just passed on through.
I noticed her on the park bench,
Feeding the birds and tapping her feet;
I noticed the tears that were escaping
As she rocked to the rhythm of my metered beat.
I noticed how she started singing
The words she had heard each day;
I noticed how later into the evening
The mayor’s wife had started to stay.
I noticed how she started looking
Straight into my eyes as I sang the words;
I noticed how I started feeling
That my lyrics sounded quite absurd.
One day, she left early, after dropping something inside my hat;
I found a key to a motel room with a little note that she attached.
It said, “I can help you write a love song, about a lonely rich man’s wife
Who met a poor musician who gave her back her life,
And then when you sing your love song, people will hear it in your voice,
That it is a song that has real meaning and they will listen without a choice.”
We made love in the evening;
We made love into the night;
We made love the next morning,
At the first signs of sun light.
When I was writing down some music
For a new song, fresh in my head,
She left our room but didn’t go home -
She drove away from our town instead.
Now my hat gets filled up quickly
As people stop to hear my song
About a love between two lovers
That didn’t last very long.
There were reasons we shouldn’t be together,
There were reasons we should have stayed apart,
But no reason could ever reason
With the passions brewing in our heart.
Copyright © Joe Flach | Year Posted 2014
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