This land is your turnaround backbeat spinning
cloud of acoustical bass dreaming
out along the rails the City of New Orleans.
Some wisdom from the ages, some fear. Some fear!
Blue loss thrummed out along the rails of wrack-stretched guitar string.
Rusted tracks to the other lost chord in search of
your spectral side of life, your land—
for Proud Mary boiling down the Great River Styx,
Mississippi—holy stream of bent notes cools
out of flood some fine day, glitters like your blue tomorrows.
Light flies from east to west dawning to dark.
Clouds sail west to east.
Do you ride the light or the clouds?
How is it to ride both at the same time when
we really haven’t got time no more, or tempo,
haven’t got time for a past.
Haven’t got time for a future passed,
our blessèd anymores no more.
Fingers and soul tremble through the chords, one of which
may be the lyre note, grace note of salvation. So listen good,
because this land is not ! your—
Not our land. This land.
This land Is, Boyo, Cowboy, Compañero,
somewhere here in the poem, the song in blues seven,
somewhere blue, clear still and always.