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Laughing at the world till the barman wipes away the warm wet circles. Doing it all over again. Finding that the time is gone, the song is over, though you thought you’d something more to say.

Cycles and arrows. Courses or circles? Something we go through once, or something that comes around again and again? A river or a carousel? Cartwheels turn to car wheels on the ground. There’s a river you wish you could skate away on. There’s laughter, then those tears.

Pleading with Death: won’t you spare me over for another year? Telling Mother Time that I’ll take a sack of what she’s carrying, that I’ll take all that she’s got till it’s gone. I guess time just makes fools of us all.

The time of the preacher, the peasant, the quiltmaker. It seems so long ago. Time out of mind. I go in search of lost time, building songs as monuments to stand for the fallen. Cosmic time: the time of the spaceways. End times, apocalyptic times, a time for stars to be extinguished.

I’ll feel glad to have danced with you for a moment of forever. I’ll have a feeling that this pain will be for evermore. I’ll claim that what’s between you and I is older than that burning ball of fire up in the sky.

Eternities. Songs that promise you forever. Claims to endless love or loyalty. Unending pain. Time perpetuated. I will work this field and know it’s neverending. I’ll plead to be danced to the end of love.

Years thought of as seasons: September songs and the springs, summers and winters of a life. Anniversaries: it was 20 years ago today, then 40, then 60. Years as constancy: I have loved you oh so many years; the 30 years waltz; the decades we’ve got ahead of us to get it right.

To talk of years is to talk of age, how we count & divide lifetimes. Years we give to others, or take from them. Everyone knows you’ve got to let them go. They take so long, go so fast. From sweet sixteen to when I’m sixty-four: all those songs obsessed with ages, with being young or being old.

Seasons come, seasons go. There’s a song for every season, and a song for all the seasons of your mind. Plan the year ahead, look back at the year that’s gone, what shapes it assumed, what path it traced. Perhaps there’s a story in there, perhaps some pain or comfort, or a pattern of some kind.

Seasons. In the sun. In the abyss. Of the witch. Seasonal beasts. Spring rain, spring breakers. Summer time, summer wine, the summer of ’69. Endless summers. Summertime sadness. Autumn leaves and almanacs. Winter winds and wonderlands, winterlude and winterreise.

Then it’s time to start again, and the song goes round the turn of the year.

One singer ventures forth on a May morning to meet the fate that folk songs tell so well. Another compares her life to a passing September that no one will recall. A third tells those who need to hear it that everything will be alright if we make it through December.

Months. From the January Man to the December days, via April in romantic cities and the September of my years, months populate song titles and lyrics as seasonal reference points, nostalgic memories and metaphors of the life course.

Sometimes I want a singer to brighten my night. More often, because singers can’t always be heard above the din of the brightest nights, I look to them to comfort, console and warm me in the wee small hours.