Spirit of Play

I've never contributed to a blog before, and I'm not about to start now. BUT my manager (Michael Caines) says that if I don't the band will never play Beach Cafe or Charity ever again. Or Bird Song, which the lovely Lucy Dallas resists on the grounds that it features the chord of C sharp minor in shameless proximity to F sharp minor. What can I say? If life were all A & E, Lucy, we'd be for ever stuck in a makeshift ward with souls-in-torment screaming in agony – and we've already played Bar Rumba.

Bird Song

The unfamiliar bird will come

when no one in particular

is looking out or feeling low;

when nothing much needs to be said

or can be done,

that’s when the bird will come.

He wasn’t there a while ago

to make this song familiar

in ways no one could have foreseen,

ways that conspired to remind me

I didn’t know

myself a while ago.

If I leave now perhaps he’ll stay,

the unfamiliar visitor,

and take the next chorus alone.

He is the strangest of strange birds

I’ve met all day.

Assuming that he’ll stay

I ought to make my excuses

and while he’s singing disappear,

as if there’s nothing to be said

or done about the way I feel

    used and useless,

the fit he induces.

And suddenly the bird has gone

along with his particular

fear of the too familiar;

because I whispered in his ear,

    ‘I know this song’,

that’s why the bird has gone.