My final hump-day task for NaPo is to write a portrait poem that focuses on the subject’s name. While most of these prompts lean to nice and light, I am still on prompt with some shade.

This could have been a self-portrait, that of a family member or friend, or of a famous person. I went with a famous person.

The Best

Cahhleigh, what cha doin’?
was how your Brit ‘not-boyfriend’
friend,
Rolling Stones fronter,
Mick Jagger said Carly.
It was a hot song that burns today.

You tell about a father of two
girls who wanted a boy: Carl.
After you, he had Peter
but lost his wife, Andrea,
to Peter’s man, your discovery.
He lost his business, then, slowly his life.
And he never showed you enough
love. But you loved him anyway.
Carly Elisabeth Simon—

third daughter, sister, mother, wife twice,
writer of children’s books and memoirs
and songs and music
for movies. Singer. Guitarist. Pianist.
Not Carl. Carly!
As many who followed were
likewise named, proudly, Carly.

The tragedies and mistakes,
the stammers and stuttering,
the anxiety and performing issues
(you call not exactly stage freight)
the loss of all loves except your children
and many fans, we are all
hanging on and enjoying the days
that remain. Indeed, nobody does it better.

That forever smile, the eyes, hair, sometimes now, hats.
Shoeless often you sang out loud. A sexy lady of seventy-nine
and an inspiration of times, to us you seem just fine.

Look both ways.
The poor are not more or less guilty of being born into a place and world than the rich.
We were not asked.
Mind the gaps without judging the trouble they cause.
Often, we cannot overcome it, so we deal with it.

You knew this would be here, right?