Being Dave Matthews

At 2:20 AM, I awake with a start
realize almost everyone in the world,
except me, has met Dave Matthews

You wouldn't think a forty year old
would care about such a thing
Leave such matters for the obnoxious
twenty somethings that inevitably
ruin his shows for us older folks
some drinking too much
taken out of performances
on stretchers

Some just puking on my new hemp
purse  Then there are those who
squeeze (without tickets--four to a seat)
into the front row with their one
ticket-holding friend and squish you
like a little marching ant, making
it hard to breathe in the great seat
you only have because you've
been a Warehouse member for
so long

But I just was a twenty something
and many parts of me are stuck
in neutral back in 1995,
when my brother first thrust
Under the Table and Dreaming
into the CD player of my green SUV
(I was a bad girl back then,
hogging all of that gas
contributing more than my fair share
of greenhouse gases--of course, what
share is fair, as it turns out)

So every friend of a friend or sister
of a co-worker is ending up
meeting Dave, one way or another,
Pictures taken with him--oh I have
lots of pictures of Dave with
bare acquaintances   people
send me, because I might be
interested----Cha-yeah!

I've seen him play though
California, Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Tennessee
Many Times Over
Once in the very first row
and I like to think that
Dave was making eye contact
with me, but still no photo

Then I leave my job
have another baby
And the conference I would
normally attend for work
Well, DMB is staying at
the same hotel and the kicker?
The daughter of my former
co-worker gets her photo
taken with Dave and shakes
his hand

Yet Dave has never met me
So this forty-year-old Warehouse
member, now on hiatus from shows
due to currently nursing infant
must know that it wasn't meant
to be

There is so much to offer though
If I could shake his hand would
I tell him what I know    what he
can never experience   He can
never know what it is like to be
in the front row or even on a hillside
of one of the band's shows,
Dancing wildly to Two Step

oh blessed depravity that can only
be mine   Move the furniture
if you need to, but still dance
Two poet hearts woven
into a web of thousands
breaking through every ounce of
crap   Dance Nancy, Dance