She was eighteen,
He was Twenty-three,
With an old brown Ford
And a smile in the trees.
And with his smile came light,
The kind that appears in early Spring,
In the morning, and only when
You’re Twenty-three.

She wore this black Flamenco dress,
Everyday, and, if I remember correctly,
That was some dress…
Tight from blade to knee,
And billowing from the back,
Begging for every young man to see.
It’s skirt, when she twirled, could cover a camera,
Mute the sound,
Get attention from all over town.
But what she saw was, in all her spinning beauty,
His tree-tall grin,
And it took her in,
To that desperately sought-out end of a quest,
Where mothers held their daughters against their *******.
It was love, perhaps too young,
But it was love,
It was,
It was.

He’s a good man!, she’d always fight,
Left home, one time, in the middle of the night.
Seventeen, too handsome for his own daring good,
That dark-eyed boy and his Redwood-smile
Hopped a south-bound train,
And he looked back, like in some old movie:
Cue the Angry sky, the loneliness, the pouring rain.
He needed to move along, and he had a feeling,
In every sense, that he would;
You know, chalk it up to that daring good.

Well, child?
Well, what?
Well, is that enough?
What happens when he’s twenty-four?
Is it you, for which he’ll walk the floor,
Or leave home, one time, in the middle of the night?
For seventeen, still handsome, still free,
Is not so different, child, from twenty-three…
But it was love, perhaps too young,
But it was love,
It was,
It was.

And Mama, he can dance,
Please remember that!
What was it that drew you,
Like some artist’s red line,
All those years ago,
To some twenty-something,
With hair like a wheat field and eyes like the sun-
In your prime, and also in his,
It wasn’t sin, but something drew you to him.
His hard work, his humor, his wit-
Mama said, and stopped.
And the way his leather soles spoke,
In circles and crooked lines-
When the light began to shine,
They’d whirl and sway,
Every time some guitar played.
Whenever the word “no” she’d been told,
Mama rushed for him to hold.