MY LADY^©

The listless feather, cast a wounded refuge from the wings of a passing seagull, rode silently upon its windy stallion. The emerald waves crashed upon the shore and tiny sea crystals turned rainbow hues in the sunlight. It was now two o'clock, mid-day and she still wasn't here. I thought, "Surely she will come, she often comes on days as beautiful as this". Just a year ago last week she had visited my mother and comforted her from the pain she had so long endured. I can still remember the look on my mother's face after she had left so peacefully. Oh, she must indeed be a grand lady. They will never get me to believe the stupid stories they tell about her. The nerve of some of these people, trying to smear mud on a name as great as hers and after she has relieved so many of them from their living hell. I've been sitting here so long I'm getting a bit tired. The cool summer breeze has all but stopped now. The sun is half swallowed by the sea. I will soon be enshrouded by the blackness of night, and the loneliness of my lady death.

This metaphorical paragraph entitled MY LADY is one of the two first published writings by Bruce Springsteen. It was published on the Apr 1969 edition of Seascape (or Seascapes according to Brucebase [read below]), the school literary magazine of Ocean County College, Toms River, NJ. Note that the paragraph was erroneously attributed in print to "Bruce Sprengsteen". The other publishing on this Apr 1969 edition is an untitled 16-line poem divided into 4 stanzas. I wrote about it under the title SEASCAPE.

Only a few issues of this publishing are known to exist. Most fans have seen Springsteen's writings in Seascape only under glass at the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame Museum in Cleveland. Recently, an issue of this Seascape edition was donated for The Bruce Springsteen Special Collection at the Asbury Park Public Library, becoming the 3113th accepted item into the collection which is devoted to preserving the writing history and cultural legacy of Bruce Springsteen and members of the E Street Band.

Most of the above info is taken from Backstreets.com. However, Brucebase has some additional and contradictory info about MY LADY and SEASCAPE [read below].

If you have any corrections or additional info, please contact me via the below form or by email:

According to John at Brucebase:

We describe the publication from which the poems emanate as the school's "LITERARY Yearbook", not the Student Yearbook. It is our understanding, from correspondence from an Ocean County College librarian, that the school published an annual Literary Yearbook and an annual Student Yearbook and that both are hard cover and hard spine - i.e. books.

Regarding the titles, this is a point we need (and will) further research. There is also some question/confusion as to the initial (first) publishing date of the Springsteen poems (Jan 69 or Apr 69) or whether there were in fact two slightly different print runs (or two entirely different publications) that included the Springsteen poems.

It is our understanding the book/magazine is titled "SEASCAPES". We have one of the poems listed as "Seascape" (singular). The title of both of the two poems "Seascape" and "My Lady" were provided to us by an Ocean County College librarian, prior to us seeing the photos of the poems. From what we can see there is clearly no title shown for one of the two poems. We don't know what would have motivated this Librarian (who is no longer there) to give us the title "Seascape" while at the same time mentioning to us that the publication is called Seascapes. Weird, because we questioned that very point SEASCAPES/"Seascape" at the time with the Librarian. The only thing we can deduct is that there is some alternative publication of the poems with that title... or the librarian at Ocean County College made a mistake. If it turns out there is no title we'll definitely change it to "untitled". We won't make up any title.