The Best Is Yet to Come
The best is yet to come and, babe, won’t it be fine?
Dancing, crooning
Love songs
Ties and gowns or overalls and pinafores,
Doesn’t matter
There is glitter in the air
The lights of romance
There’s music from a combo
Ain’t it all fine?
There has to be more of this
Not an increase
Or exaggeration
But ongoing
The laughing, dancing, crooning combo
Always at hand
To have and have again
Not a party without end
But reasons to
Celebrate that last
The kind of work
(exertion of energy)
That heals
The smiles from musicians, which
Can say
We are free at last
And we love you
And an audience
In equal measure grateful
Taking part
Tomorrow there will be other things
And there will be tomorrow
For now,
There’s confidence
In this place of music
Fancy lights
(not the kind that blind)
Hands clasping on the dancing floor
Maybe we’ll go outside
Not because nature is tame
But because
It tames us
With its own lights of night
And gift of rock
For a dancing floor
This is a vision
Of necessity
Because the flesh that hears,
Touches, and responds
Should go on in some way
Call it paradise
The life renewed
That hasn’t lost a note or a step
C L Couch
“The Best Is Yet to Come”
written by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh
Frank Sinatra and Count Basie performed and recorded for the album It Might as Well Be Swing (1964) and performed and recorded by many others.
photo by Manuel Inglez on Unsplash
Parque Natural de Sintra-Cascais, Sintra, Portugal
March 10, 2020 at 8:32 pm
Those last three lines say it all. I like your vision. There’s a gentle contentment to it, the kind of contentment I imagine animals feel when they raise a brood of babies and see them off into lives of their own.
March 11, 2020 at 12:16 am
Thank you! I’m especially grateful for the comparison with animals. But the “gentle contentment”–yeah, I think that’s what I’m getting at. We should go for this, then keep it.
March 11, 2020 at 2:35 pm
If you’ve got it, you’re lucky. It takes some doing.
March 10, 2020 at 8:33 pm
Hi CL, such nice visuals and a delightful poem. 🙂 Very nice song choice. I gave it a listen to and really enjoyed it. 🎶
March 11, 2020 at 12:13 am
Thank you, Erin! I heard that song very early this morning and worked on my own riff. I hope you are really well!
March 16, 2020 at 9:33 pm
Your very welcome 😊 I’m doing well. I hope you’re doing well also.
March 12, 2020 at 3:57 am
Oh i felt my heart tapping and swaying to the beat of this poem. I felt the love and the contentment, most of all the bliss in between. A beating write, brother.
March 12, 2020 at 12:10 pm
What a gentle rhythm, and so many conjured images of the dance floor, it takes one right back to that first dance, all dances, where romance is possible – the hands clasping, the crooning combo, the laughing, the celebration of life. I love it, and then the part about taking it all outside into nature. Wonderful, Christopher.