From the Quill: A Prayer for Jane

Amid the clutter that still brackets my life, and serves at times to distract me, is my music collection – something around four or five thousand MP3-music tracks. Most of these are songs that made the rock-side of the years' Top Hundred (or should have) during the long and winding span of my life thus far. These I keep on CD by year, each disk holding as many as (almost) 200 tracks; and every so often I pull them out and listen to them, singing along badly sometimes, in my car. Yes, my car's CD player can handle MP3 CDs. (What, yours can't?) This is one of very few indulgences of mine... and I don't do iPods; thank you.

I do also have some of the music broken out specifically by artist and genre – such as John Michael Talbot – for times when my heart or mind or soul needs the lift that only a piece of Baroque, or of gently sung prayer, can deliver me. But most is commercial music, and mostly rock (though I have come to include some country, dance, punk, blues, reggae, and so on).

Last November, I was listening to my disk of 1979 songs, and was unexpectedly touched deep in my heart by a fond memory that the almost-thirty years since have failed to dim. I was eighteen most of that year, out of high school, and studying at the local community college. I was working at a shopping center in Maryland, near the state lines with Pennsylvania and the Virginias. The world was my oyster, as they say, and the pearls were beautiful.

That summer I had an affair, or fling, or whatever you want to call it. My girlfriend (still in high school) had gone to stay with her divorced father (he lived just outside Camden, New Jersey) for the off-school months. And a friendly, perky blonde my age (actually, she'd just turned nineteen), who worked across the corridor, struck up an acquaintance with me, and soon we were driving around the area and hanging out together.

Let me stray over my firm privacy-line just enough to give her real first name here: Jane. As I was saying, though, neither one of us had pursued the other; Jane and I had somehow simply fallen into… some real fun together. She never asked if I had a girlfriend (and I don't think I ever told, either), and it mattered little to me then, at that age.

She was great, delightful company, with a sweet voice, a slightly dangerous glint to her eye (a native Marylandress, she occasionally called me "ornery", which I think I may have earned!), and I found she had an easy laugh… And I remember still her big smile more than nearly anything else about her. We never used the word "love", but there was no question that we did love our time spent together.

And all that summer, in the background – as in many a movie – there played some powerful music as our own personal soundtrack. Disco was beginning to sputter out already, punk was going strong, alternative was beginning to make inroads, rap was in its very infancy, and rock simply rocked.

Some fun songs really seemed to be written about zany Jane. ELO (watered down and slightly discoed up from their recent heyday) had "Don't Bring Me Down", where Jeff Lynne sings: "You're looking good, just like a snake in the grass!" That much, anyway, was Jane.

So was The Atlanta Rhythm Section's "Spooky": "Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you!" The song was playing once when I visited her at work; I pointed that out to her, and she just grinned.

Even The Knack's "My Sharona" fit us, in a way, with the lines "When are you going to get to me? Is it just a matter of time? Is it a destiny?" Although that particular song stands in our soundtrack mostly for its eager beat than for any of its words.

But for the feel now, to me, of that innocent summer, nothing hits it quite so accurately as two songs charted by The Commodores that year. The melody-line of "Sail On" is soft and almost melancholic, even while the lyrics tell of a bitter breakup – which Jane and I never had. (More in a moment.) Walking away from it all, Lionel Ritchie is singing "It was plain to see that a small-town boy like me just wasn't your cup of tea; that was wishful thinking." Not so with Jane; our teacup was overflowing.

Nor do their lyrics of their other 1979 charter, "Still", describe us either, apart from "We played the games that people play; …somehow I know, deep in my heart, you needed me…" Yet both these songs, with their gentle rhythms, and the wistful recollections the notes elicit, bring back our sudden summer more than any other.

It was simply a fun summer, made light and fun and wonderfully memorable by how we had found ourselves in each other's arms and lives. Come September, though, my girlfriend returned, and I lost the job that had put me in Janie's world. We did bump into each other occasionally over the next couple years, and just between the two of us I could still feel that current, see that spark in her eye and slight twitch to her mouth that told me she hadn't forgotten our summer.

What a coincidence, eh?

That autumn, a revamped Jefferson Starship released a single named, interestingly, "Jane", though only the title was anything like her. I went with my girlfriend up to her father's home near Camden over Thanksgiving, and at one point that song came on the radio. I startled my girlfriend by doing a great air-guitar over the song's bridge; likely she didn't see the wisp of sadness behind my eyes.

Jane and I each went on to date others, and married them. I hope she did well, and much better than I did. Certainly there'd been a potential there that could have been pursued, instead of turned away from, when the world grew cooler again.

But I don't regret where the years since have brought me, most especially my daughters, and my ever-growing faith, and deep peace of heart and soul. I have no desire to find this girl Jane (now a forty-something woman, somehow) and reminisce with her, even while my heart glances back occasionally as I grow older and continue directing my life along a path far different from any she or I (or she and I) would have considered treading back then.

I think, though, if somehow we saw each other again, her eye would still show me that little spark, even while I sincerely shake her husband's hand, and mention my plans for the seminary. That's okay; no regrets. My life is richer for her having passed through it so briefly, and I thank her.

And so, with this cast of mind while I listened to one of those Commodores songs last November, I found a bit of verse writing itself in my head, and I typed it up as soon as I got home. I'd like to put it out there today for this lass (and the eighteen-year-old she touched). This is because I was listening to some of that summer's music again today and this past weekend; sometimes quite a few years can melt away, inside.

Often in my life, as a relationship's grown, or fallen apart, I've found myself cathartically putting some of my thoughts and feelings into poetry (most of it lousy), some of which I may unload on my blog from time to time. I'll offer a few cruddy samples here, sometimes, as some more of my Steal My Stuff!, but the few better pieces, when I post them here at all, are still very much mine, and may yet be part of something larger published on actual paper. So they're still mine, folks; besides, I have the originals, and the drafts. Heh-heh.

I never wrote one at the time for Jane, though. So now, nearly three decades later, Jane, this one's all for you. Take care, my friend.

Prayer for Janie

So many years down this twisted road,
Far-traveled this heart from maverick meander;
Now a moment, some minutes, of music
     that played behind us those nights

The notes and voice unchanged through time,
And thus my heart feels you close, and clearly;
Too, my arms and hands – even fingers –
     recall afresh your softness, warmth

A smile (some gold, a halo) alit before me;
Work and duties finished, evening opened,
Whispers in the night down roads I'll never find,
     smoke or fog let loose, embracing

Private grasp, tender touch, taste of mint;
scent of summer, sense of heat... your heart
Explored together while wire untwisted
     brought in melody (and muse) and stars

Today and now, the winter draws ever nigh
Cool air and clouds and distant sun
Too long gone past our heat together
     when dark enfolded hearts unharnessed

Our play of youth, dance of lip and tongue, touch,
To years unceasing I've not surrendered
Within a soul that trusts you, too, some days recall
     eager young hands, tender wordless love

Miles away, dizzy years far driven,
I pray for you, sweet Jane, the love your trust deserved,
The hand of God about you, His peace all-filling
     the ages here inside that never left us;

That: time unthinking still carried you kindly,
Bearing you gently on through the world I left you
And at times unbidden unaging songs
     whisper yet my younger touch to you