Have Yourself…       He sings, thinks it might be nearly the last time for that old song, walks the quiet beach that usually means poor weather, people working, kids in the care of growing up. Sometimes when he used to walk in the city he would find small change, once a few twenties. Then he made a friend who showed him cornices and peaks. Hard habit to make – look up, stand straight.   He remembers a few bars he sings and sings and sings and this singing helps him through a gray mood, helps him through an environment skinny with peaks and change as if the singing were a hand helping a child across a street, reminding him to look both ways.   Other times, well, hard to say those words today. Ecstatic, expressive, inner, utterly so.   So yesterday he clamped himself under noise canceling headphones, tried a new singer doing an old tune, mowed the lawn, heeled in an Azalea that was utterly magnificent in dish and bloom. Too bad he neglected it. Now it’s all swan song, maybe torch, poor brittle burnt leafed thing. With hope in the green remaining he unpotted, dug it in.   But this morning’s beachside walking is not digging in or looking up or down or trying to nourish a last pulse into flourish. It’s just a man who heard a song in his yard yesterday afternoon singing as he walks along.       - Henry Rappaport