Reading through
Ratso Sloman's take
on Rolling Thunder

again, in 2019

alone on the farm

I move
in such close proximity
to Dylan et consortes

but already
as the entourage moved
across the northeast
in 1975,
it was a celebration
of something earlier;
of a mid-Sixties' wonder
of creativity

while the present now
is littered
with the de-composed corpses
of the light-hearted
of the Revue

'cept Dylan
who, incredibly,
still travels
to London
and gay Paris

as I step back
into Ratso's journal
and smell the rank stench
of the steel-works
mix
with the Indian perfume
that Lilian used to wear
at Lilla Strömgatan
those diamond-eyed mid-Seventies

and already my mind senses
the autumn
beyond this hot summer;
its reclusive introspection;

raven wings flapping
unseen
through the darkness
of fir forests;

the old-timer's lonely thoughts,
after the show