"COMPANY"

by David Eye

 

 

I’ll remember you too clearly . . .

There was the college room of it:
a fishnet on the walls and ceiling
above a single bed. A turntable on
bookshelves of stacked cinderblock
and pine plank. There was macramé.

There was this boy and that boy,
the night of not-knowing then
knowing. Its bright orange flash.
Two months: nearby towns,
borrowed cars, Greyhounds.

Until a Trailways, and this boy
putting that boy on the last bus out
and all day in his room a singer
on an LP crying for company
and this boy hugging his knees.

And there was the years-go-by of it:
a house in the hills, miles of summer.
And the singer on CD: I’ll never have
this chance again No, not like you not like you.
And there was this boy who never did.

In some ways, never did.

 

 

 

Title and italicized lines from “Company,” Rickie Lee Jones. Rickie Lee Jones. Warner Bros., 1979.

 

 

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