First time around for Timothy B. Schmit and those Eagles boys

First time around

There is something so unalloyed

About his capacity for joy,

Like he’s living his life

Way better than the rest of us.

Hopeful in his skinny youth

And smiles wide like Christmas morning,

He is so unadulterated

That it makes you quiver.

He clings on to the rails

As the wind batters him breathless.

He’s finally where he feels

He should have been all along.

The smile never leaves his face

He wants to inhabit every second

And make this last the rest of his life.

While he’s determined to enjoy this trip,

Sunbathing in jeans, bare-chested

But for a gold crucifix,

Or grinning into the camera,

Wrapped in a seafarer’s cable knit,

Behind his unsuspecting back,

Everyone else has already abandoned ship.

The picture of 70s innocence

Distilled in Timothy,

In headphones and white dungarees.

A wide-eyed doe-like wonder

That he’s even really here.

You want to brush that long dark hair

And freeze him there so free from care.

And this spirit, his blithe trust

In the sanctity of his happiness

So soon betrayed, ashes, dust –

You catch it through the PC screen

Through forty years of time between.

You still feel so satisfied

When you can see him smile.

[Most of the photos half-inched from http://www.eaglesonlinecentral.com.]

For a slightly more informative blog on Timothy, Poco and the Eagles, see http://sshh-sshh.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/schmitten-part-one-flow-of-energy-was.html

And for an imagined scenario of Timothy’s experience with the Eagles, see https://bashfulbadgersblog.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/bad-timing-with-the-eagles/.

For a second poem, see https://bashfulbadgersblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/timothy-b-schmit-and-the-eagles-part-2/.