Thursday, March 10, 2011

witnessing poem


Bethel

we walked six miles, through
a half a million cars on the closed

new york state freeway,
took shelter in a barn as it started to rain.

got to the ticket booth and found it
abandoned, fence a memory in the mud

and two girls in a plastic bubble
pulled us inside, our breath

steamed the walls, cocooned us
in the sound of richie havens

talkin’ about freedom, a long long
way from our home.

you have no idea what a good time
the party was in 1969,

the wires in the pools at jerry garcia’s feet
made him taste the music on his tongue.

we were city boys and took the first marked path
into that upstate forest,

sat with strangers on a long flat boulder,
rubbing mint oil on our hands and savoring our luck.

when we came home, we stayed up all night
filling in the blanks the newspapers left for our mother’s.

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