Til the World Ends--Three Dog Night 1975
Surfing You Tube, I come upon
“Til The World Ends” by
Three Dog Night. It was a lesser
hit of theirs from 1975, but
it always reminded me of you,
and that time we were
going to up to Lake Erie
between semesters.
I’d squandered my summer steel
mill cash on Black Russians,
and was nebulous about the trip
in a nimbus way. So, when you asked
me if it was about the money,
that night on my grandfather’s
front porch swing
---of course, it wasn’t---
So, we went to Lake Erie
for the time of our untold lives.
I can evoke “The Return of the Pink
Panther”, a yellow hair dryer,
and waking up from a particular nap.
But, given our model of
discourse, it is not
surprising that we didn’t
attain the apocryphal It
--despite our subsequent
engagement—
And that’s because life
is a business,
and we were a lemonade stand.
All of which is a cul de sac
looping back to those
three dog nights, which is an Eskimo
expression, some say, long before
Eli’s Coming, and Joy to the World,
referring to those coldest of nights
when it took three dogs on the bed to keep
us...and them... from freezing---
Symbiosis---to employ a more scientific
term where poetry doesn’t apply anymore.
“Til the World Ends” cracked the
Top 40 to number 32, the Dog’s
last hop upon the mattress. But
those soaring falsetto peals
on the fade out....Oh yes, that’s it.
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