if only the girl in the song were real/and the boy were me

she would be a california girl with a mild southern accent/and i would have surfed from an early age/and met her on a bright summer afternoon on the beach

and i would have a vw bug and legs almost too long for it/and she would say I was lanky

and we ate a lot of ice cream but stayed skinny by burning calories surfing and running miles and miles on the sand and making out after taking showers

and we got picked to be the first shipload of settlers on the first moon colony where there would be no surfing but plenty of flying with strapped-on wings and tail assemblies

and–whoops, the song is over

wow, what a song/really took me places

here I am a seventy-year-old man with stubby legs again

yearning for what can never be

but maybe there’s a woman out there, a woman my age, for whom leg-stubbiness is not a significant factor in the selection of a companion

who wants to be a landlocked surfer girl

with some occasional barefoot-on-the-sand interludes

time and patience will tell

and hearing that song