for Joni Mitchell

 

Cactus Tree was our song, the one

that lit a flame, when I heard you sing

and taped you, bruised and plaintive,

on John Peel’s Top Gear. Straight off

 

your gift possessed me, too young

in sixty-eight for you to even notice

how I tagged along: the one face

in the entourage who really got you

 

and realized that other men

would leave you wanting more,

while you danced on tables,

obsessed, as ever, with being free

 

in the candle-lit taverna where, 

scowling, I found you smooching

with a drifter you’d taken

into your bed all week.

 

And when you booked that suite

with its own Steinway grand,

I fetched you flowers that wilted

and fruit you didn’t eat,

 

too involved in writing songs

that soon the world would own,

but I was still the first to hear

played the way you meant.