Song Writer's Lament (So Much for that Bottle of Jameson)

He had dozens of songs about moonlight,
how the colors splashed on the bay.
There were a few about the long view,
how love would save the day.

But he always came back to love that was lost,
to the child abandoned, the stray -
to the hole in his heart that grew deeper, in part,
from the sad songs he loved to play.

There were waltzes, too,
for the woman, who
danced through his heart
and welcomed him home
when his songs were through

Fog settled thicker than pudding -
whether inside or outside, unclear.
His tunes grew confused;
he couldn't tell whose were whose -
everything too distant or a little too near.

But even as he drifted to slumber,
there was a melody shaping his dreams -
a fountain that spills,
all the hearts that it fills,
love that keeps bursting its seams.

Chorus

He had dozens of songs about moonlight,
of love's bittersweet blessings and scars -
his true mother tongue,
the ladder whose rungs
let him climb up to the stars.