Pause. Rewind.

When you rewind the years
and hear yourself, your guitar,
Eddie’s voice, singing those songs
the two of you wrote,
it brings back that house you shared,
those rooms, the ‘locals’
who turned up night after night
to party with the two English boys,
the girls who knocked on the door
just to have a look at the foreigners,
that little lad we recorded
singing, unaccompanied,
a heavily accented version
of She’s A Lady,
the raucous banging on the tables,
the sound bouncing off the bare walls
in the undecorated lounge;
what a time that was.

And then there’s the Israeli girl sobbing
while we left the tape running.
Drunk.  Seemingly heartbroken.  Inconsolable.
The drink talking. Throaty. Guttural.
Dredging up some deep pain.
And the two of us being
the only ones in that room
not understanding a word she’s saying.
I remember someone putting
his arm around her, hugging her,
and laughing.

She's A Lady