Bob Dylan

“He’s a Jew who took
a few half-decent lines
and made a shitload of money,”
she sniffed with great disdain.

If I’d had the wherewithal
I’d have got up and left
or struck her. She was
lovely, more’s the pity —

she was lovely and instead
I turned my head and said,
nodding, “I’ve heard that said
before,” in a nicely even keeled

voice, not looking at her
and indeed looking away
at the far wall of the student
union, the far brick wall;

dark brown, dark as
an unpainted jail wall,
almost black but really
burned brown or apparently

so, her words firing up,
licking at the base of the wall,
not tearing it down, not
shredding it — but

I didn’t say anything then;
it’s all I remember of her, not her
name or anything other
than that she said it with a bit of

bitterness, more animated
than she had ever been before.
I remember that and that I said
nothing, no response.

I regret so much of my life and times.
Bob Dylan didn’t need me then
and he sure doesn’t need me now, fifty
years later, wasting away, regretting,

bemoaning, selfishly thinking
of what I should have said and done;
she said it, I did what I did which
was nothing at all, Bob Dylan kept

singing, the earth continued spinning
with only a burned wall hiccup,
really nothing at all. I felt it then, I admit it.
I felt it and for a moment I regret it, then move on

like an earthquake rattled the world and never ended,
like a storm passed over and held still above us,
like boots marching, like death itself coming,
like it matters what I did or did not do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T