Last thoughts on Woody Guthrie

It’s afternoon in another country, in a friend’s small apartment with a music system that seems bigger than the room. Outside seems shut out and it’s quiet inside. The poet’s uncertain voice stammers to a start and rolls and tumbles along taking you on a ride through the rollercoaster life with its sham and skullduggery, cheapskates and cheaper thrills, political plotting and character assassination among hope and sunset that doesn’t feel like the end. It leaves you quiet for a while. You hear it again. And let it sink in slowly as spreads into your consciousness, leaving a trail that gets covered with your workaday life over time only to resurface, suddenly. Like today.