For Woody
by Wulf Losee

The child who heard your songs
engraved on scratchy vinyl
spinning on the turntable
heard the slap of treadworn tires
heard the clack of railroad cars
in the record's skips and pops
in your transcendental okie voice
that made me dream of
restless people moving westward
on a thousand highways.

The young man who remembered your songs
as I fled from the rusty winds of a small town
and who hoped your land was wide enough
to embrace me for one more new beginning

is now an old man who whistles your songs
in a dusty pitch as I hear your lyrics in the sound
of the highway that winds within me.

“All you can write is what you see,
Woody G...”