Monday, October 19, 2009

Before You Begin

Again and again the same thumb,
Again and again the same circle,
The same infinite path that
My skin enters and escapes
Trying to find that old Bob Dylan song
My mother would play when she did chores
Waiting for my father.

The song I would sing along with
Before I learned to speak its language,
Before I knew that he sang about me,
But not me then, and not me now.

Everything continues to escape me
In its eternally ephemeral way,
But this song remains somewhere
In this same infinite path,
Waiting for me to find it and to sing it,
Again and again contemplating
How long it will have to spend
Waiting for my father.

If tomorrow wasn't such a long time,
Then lonesome would mean nothing to you at all.