I measure time
in Bob Dylan's face;
the wrinkles that climb up his trousers
and settle 'round his baby face,
gradually, bit by year, piece by month,

in the cracks of hoarseness opening
through his rough rider voice

all in my own getting up and go,
all in my own waisting away

from encounter one
on my Swedish grammar school trip
to Hamburg in May 1965,
in the bus getting off the Puttgarden – Rødby ferry,
Mr. Tambourine Man on the bus medium wave

through a Vrena Village villa party
of June 1967,
Desolation Row again and again
in a small hallway,
Dylan's still clean look on the record sleeve,
me taking the railcar back to town
through the wasted light of morning

all in my own getting up and go,
all in my own waisting away

to the clean-cut kid sporting his innocent face
in England
in the Don't Look Back movie; no wrinkles
whatsoever,
a wet, rainy October night
in a small-town Swedish movie theater
1967

'til the 1968 John Wesley Harding
played in full for me on a long-distance
phone-call from Sune,
telling me to listen closely,
and I did,
Dylan's face some ways off with some scruffy
Pakistani bauls or something
on the LP cover in my possession later,
his face a little wrinkly against the light

and by way of the Fort Collins concert
of the second Rolling Thunder tour,
televised in Sweden in the summer of 1977,
his face grimmer and more tormented
as I sat watching at a girlfriend's place
in Gothenburg,
attending a Jehovah's Witnesses assembly

now reaching more wrinkles and a tighter
whip
at the Tarrant County Convention Center
in Fort Worth, Texas,
as Dylan hit it on the 24th of November 1978,
right at the start of his Christian period,
when I was right up front with Judy,
my recently wedded wife,
who turned 25 the very same day

all in my own getting up and go,
all in my own waisting away

and as the poem reaches far for its conclusion,
I stir things 'round the Tell Tale Signs triple
from the 1990s,
where Dylan's face turns strictly gentlemanly
with a little mustache
of wicked charm,
a dried up river bed of curly clay of a face,
and a venomous and sharp diction
at Anna's bedside each night,
with her four chosen lullabies
Things Have Changed
Tell Ol' Bill
Born In Time
and Most Of The Time

In back of my mind,
this face an old barn wall
on an abandoned East Texas farm,
me riding my Crescent ten-speed
in the fading glare
of being

all in my own getting up and go,
all in my own waisting away,

lifelines of my opening hands
the tracks of twisters tilting
through the years
in this sinister sign anguish,
the face of a song and dance man
at the sordid service of Chronos