Seeing Bob

I could write a small book about my relationship with the work of Bob Dylan but I'm not going to do that now.

Here are two poems.  The second one was written in 1991 by my first husband, who introduced me to the world of Bob and with whom I attended 7 performances, including the one he wrote about anticipating here.  I had the opening lines of the poem in my head all day yesterday leading up to seeing Bob that evening.

The first poem is written by me about that.  For twenty-five years I've had a friend who I met through our interest in Dylan but although separately we've seen him many times, I with various different people, we have never managed to attend a concert together until now.

expecting my last time
watching dylan

before I let him go

I am caught unawares

by the thrill

of the performance

here he is before us

bob the same bob

just being in the now

like we should all

be, telling us

things have changed

here is what he wants

to show us

this is what he feels

in these songs today

and highway 61 is joyful

and so am I

me and my dylan buddy

twenty-five years

waiting to see bob together

and it’s everything

it could be

and worth the wait

tangled up in blue

I weep for the bob-centric years

of my first lost marriage

feeling reconnected

at last to the start of

things

bob the same bob

nobody else quite right

to go with till now

restored in my heart

joyous plaintive rollicking

genius poet muso

transformative

just as it should be

leaving me wanting

the next time

knowing of course

I want to do it all again

Jane Vernon, May 2017 

last year bob

you just like a woman'd

and man in the long black coat'd

to the ceiling

of the Hammersmith Odeon
on the night the

specialists in institutionalised poison

unleashed the attack on

my invasive leukaemic cells

I listen to the tape of your

weighty cries at the foothills of thunder

              at the chords of doubt

              at the crossroads of the spirit

              in the whine of love

              in the heart of loss

as you knew them on that day

which I spent blanketed in drugs and exhaustion

a year later I tick away the days

until I see you once more

I will be there this year

to allow you to stand amid

the waves of the hugest unknowns

while east and west play armageddon

while my blood cells orgy

while beauty holds my hand

and you with you lone harmonica

sing it all for us free

as you have done

since the primal

blowin of the wind

Mike Vernon, January 1991