The Day Bob Dylan Came to My House
I was in my studio minding my daydream, looking at Rudy’s trailer
through the coyote fence, listening to thunder rolling down the canyon.
Just as it is not true that the Great American Desert is empty,
it is not true that nothing ever happens in Pecos,
though to the jet-lagged eye, the untuned ear, it may appear so.
Bob stepped out of his two-tone 1961 Cadillac convertible.
He tipped his hat, said he made a wrong turn somewhere
and asked me if I could give him directions to La Cueva Road.
Make a left onto Highway 50 and go up 3 miles, hang a right.
Okay, thanks, Bob said. I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back
again, it depends upon how I’m feelin.’ He drove down
the gravel driveway, crunching stones beneath the whitewalls.
He passed the Spanish Dagger, smoothly disappearing between
the cholla and the lilac.
I was looking at Rudy’s trailer as the rain began to fall. I was staring
at the precarious rows of firewood that were waiting for winter, the horses
next door were napping in their stalls, peanut-sized clouds were floating
in a clear watery sky following the storm. Jim’s seven cannibalized cars
were where they’ve always been, Mary’s pack of unidentifiable stuff
was piled neatly in front of her house. The same weeds and grasses
were sucking in the same dry rain they’ve been sucking in for twenty years.
The occasional hum of traffic on 50 sneaked through the trees.
I was in my studio and nothing happened the day Bob Dylan came to my house.
RS 2010