{"id":11381,"date":"2026-09-13T07:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T14:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=10131"},"modified":"2026-09-13T07:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T14:30:20","slug":"10131","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/10131\/","title":{"rendered":"Promise of a Song"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- wp:themify-builder\/canvas \/-->\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wrote a song for her 33 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Her first name and last name initial the title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;d never written a song for anyone before\u2014or since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There won&#8217;t be another one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A three-chord (A-G-D) guitar song somewhat in the hypnotic style of the Velvet Underground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She saw my mediocre rock band perform it in a dive bar,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">hearing for the first time,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">standing in the front row,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">sweat soaked,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">wearing yellow,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">tattoo dancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You are lucky if you ever get to see a face like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Part of the chorus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Once was a cheerleader<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>now she&#8217;s just okay<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Gonna go out and<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>change the world one day<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Why does promise dissipate slowly or disappear suddenly in so many of us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve written so many poems exploring this subject of late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What came along to entomb, waylay or derail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Were Americans like this in the 70s and 80s?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps dissipation and disappearance<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">have always been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maybe I can only see it now<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">because of confrontation with the past as you age<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">and what three decades the Internet has wrought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I know I fulfilled my promise<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">when I became a writer,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">unearthed and published lost Oregon stories,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">restored wrecked watersheds,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">re-materialized after personal extinction,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">took care of my dying father,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">read eulogies for men<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">who had no one to eulogize them,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">rescued another dog,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">learned how to become a friend,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">got my homeless friend Mark into housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Whenever I play the song today,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">it sounds like a dirge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wrote a song for her 33 years ago. Her first name and last name initial the title. I&#8217;d never written a song for anyone before\u2014or since. There won&#8217;t be another one. A three-chord (A-G-D) guitar song somewhat in the hypnotic style of the Velvet Underground. She saw my mediocre rock band perform it in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10132,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}