Leaving Minnesota on train or buses,
crowded and alone, were you fearful
to sleep on couches and of the Village
people with a rhapsody of dreams

and cacophony of chords, under rain
and sewer stank was it hard,
to step inside and play
the first time for glistening eyes
and stage lights and to let melody
escape your belly-throat

for them, or did you know
more, that words can sculpt
delicacy as smooth
as Donatello and that life can be bought
without wrinkled greens and pressed

threads? Walking under a hard-rain
of assumption and change, did Greenwich
birth a demon-sadness, so you hid
your neck beneath collars and dark
glasses and smoky rhyme, when the ship

comes in will you be onboard or escape
to Louisiana, misunderstood, working
a river boat after you give Lennon
a puff and Warhol a tight-fist?

Did sad-eyed Sara send you back
leather spanish boots or forget,
and was Christ able to mend that
broken love, and did you later kick his idiot
wind away and in 2009 on stage when I could
see emptiness and heartbreak
hidden underneath your creased stetson,
were you still singing
it ain't me, babe?