He long ago traded in his brief rock stardom
for the meditative peace of a miniature rock garden.
As he rakes soothing lines in the white sand,
he recalls the pandemonium of his minor hit
back in the early ‘70s. It was a mixed thrill
of unleashed ego and mayhem, but even then
he knew it wouldn’t last.
It did happen. The catchy song
about the girl who teased the world
and the formulaic heartbreak it caused.
“Unapologetic.”
A transcendent sweet 2:54 of melodic ear candy.
“We pretended life was splendid.”
Simple, trite love lyrics.
It was an infectious tune that got a lot
of college radio airplay, and soon he was
opening for some almost headliners,
by their request, or so his manager swore.
You can find it on the streaming sites,
right alongside that ancient photo.
His hair was long, thick, and wavy then,
his voice untrained but strong,
his guitar accompaniment
little more than capable
in the singer/songwriter style of that era.
In retrospect, the whole escapade
seemed whimsical, like he was
playing a lead in some bad school musical.
But when the weeks of touring stopped,
his manager pressured him to create
an equal or better follow-up song.
He froze. He drowned in his own flop sweat.
Everything he came up with
was a derivative lesser of some other
popular album’s greatest cut at the time.
The fount of creativity was bone dry.
He once believed he had had a special gift,
the oft-elusive kiss of genuine creativity.
This optimistic illusion faded quickly.
His brief cup of coffee with fame
disappeared in a bitter hurry.
Soon he was back living in his
parent’s basement, taking temp jobs
wherever he could find them.
Sometimes a neighbor would
engage him in small talk while
out walking the dog.
For the most part, it seemed
as if it all had been a crazy dream.
Who could imagine that young,
unapologetic dreamer
would awaken decades hence,
a veritable whole lifetime later,
in another time and place
with a head full of new songs.
These songs were fully realized,
birthed out of a lifetime of music
heard, sung, played, digested.
They were interestingly unpredictable,
original and somewhat unexpected.
He had changed too. After years
of practiced quiet meditation,
he now could control the random voices,
transform them into a whole album’s worth
of the best, most melodic songs he’d ever written.
So much had changed since that time
a half century ago. Now he was patiently
recording these new songs, one part at a time,
track by track, at home for an audience of two,
if you included his latest dog.
Gone was the lust for fame, the unlikely fable of fortune.
In its stead, a small well-tended rock garden.
Whenever the occasional email from a stranger
arrived out of the internet’s blue ether,
praising his brief minor hit of bygone days,
he was far less bitter. Sometimes he’d even read
the whole thing before deleting it. He was
grateful for their kind words. He knew
they would love this new playlist.
In fact, he was sure of it.
But ultimately, he didn’t care.
He raked the white sands of the rock garden happily,
playing back the latest mix that would eventually coalesce
into something bigger and better.
He would do his best, and that would be reward enough,
keeping time with the unlikely metronome
of a wagging tail.
About the Author
Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, and musician. He recently retired from teaching. He was awarded this past year’s Peter Heinegg Literary Award from Union College. He guest-curated the Fall 2025 issue of Sheila-Na-Gig Online. He has five collections Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit), A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing) and most recently, Inside Outrage (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), an Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur finalist. He also has two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize.
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