Prompt: Write a poem honoring a song or musician or referring to a song or musician. Here is mine – “Thoughts on Turning Sixty-Eight,” which honors Woody Guthrie, wonderful songwriter who had lots of songs dealing with the Dust Bowl and migrants of the Thirties. Woody and I share the same birthday, July 14. Be sure to check out other poets who pay tribute to some of their favorite music makers and songs. Here are three more: Faith Shearin’s Blue Elvis, Barbara Crooker’s “Nearing Menapause, I Run Into Elvis at Shoprite, and January O’Neill’s “What’s Love Gto to Do With It..
Thoughts on Turning Sixty-Eight after Reading Guthrie’s 1946 New Year’s Resolutions
You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live. ―Bob Dylan
I’ve loved you for a quarter-century,
you, singing of see-through
tater stew, you, speaking
for the working man and woman,
you, giving us voice and hope in your
three-thousand songs and ballads, you,
who took us riding in your car
and put us on the train bound for glory.
I, who share
your July birthday want to learn your way.
Teach me. Show me how to live, to hobo
across this land of yours and mine, hanging
out under bridges and in tent cities, among people
whose dreams have morphed into nightmares,
with shoeless children, paining for food,
whose eyes have circled and darkened and caved
like sinkholes. Teach me, as John taught you and
as you taught the Boss, to look into kids’ eyes
and see myself. Teach me to stay glad
and dream good and to play good and sing
good and to love. To love everybody.
To wake up everyday and fight. Fight
through injustice and prejudice,
through fires and bad luck, through fate and
tragedy as big as insane asylums, even when
I don’t feel at home in this world anymore.
I am your disciple, Woody, ready
for instruction when you are. Until that time,
|So, long, I’ve got to be driftin’ along.
Published: Poetry On Line 2021; Photo on Unsplash by Marius Masalar