The Answer’s Still Blowing in the Wind

My introduction to Folk Music came one Saturday evening when I was fifteen. One of my friend’s father took a few of us to hear a music group. They were high school kids from Virginia performing in a church basement twenty-five miles away.  There were three guys about my age who sang what I came to know as Folk Music.

One of the guys had a homemade Bass made out of plywood. The other two guys played acoustic guitar. They were wonderful, as I recall.  Hearing folk harmonies for the first time, I was mesmerized when they sang Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind. I never heard of Bob Dylan at that time, but I loved this wonderful music. They sang If I had a Hammer, Cotton Fields, and Five Hundred Miles and many more. I did not realize then how powerful words and music could be, but now, sixty years later I am still singing and listening to this music.

Folk melodies ring

as true today as back then

Words for the ages

*

Calling out for hope and change

Answers still blowin’ in the wind

1970

Photo: Jim Bowman

Today, Lisa at d’Verse asked us to write a poem about music that inspires us. This took me back the high school and college days in the 1960s.  In college we had a Folk-Gospel group called the Optimists. Singing together was the highlight of my college years. We still get together from time to time.

Join us at: https://dversepoets.com

Making a Difference

Her gray hair that once flowed around her shoulders
Now pulled back tightly held with a stretch band;
There she sat in her wheelchair // her gaunt body fading
Wrapped in her shawl // holding her little doll on her lap.
As I read stories to the group of elderly residents
She sat with her head down // eyes closed as though asleep;
Yet somehow, I knew she is still listening to me.
I finished, and got out my twelve-string ovation guitar;
They enjoyed singing my old classics from the sixties…
A time when we all were young, and words sung told stories.
As I began to sing, “You are my sunshine…” her head began to move
Others joined in letting the song take them to another place and time.
Thought her body remained motionless, her feet now began to move;
Her soft pink slippers began a rhythmic pattern as she relived the days
When she danced, carefree to the music, with the one she loved.
Clutching her dolly, her eyes went from open to closed and open again
She rode the rhythms of each song in her mind, as feet danced
Pushing her wheelchair back to her unit she quietly said to me,
“I really enjoy that.”
It was then I knew I was making a difference!

Photo: Dwight L. Roth

Anmol, at d’Verse, asked us to write a poem that uses description of a person that paints a picture of that person for the reader. I decided to write about one of the elderly persons who comes to hear my stories and songs at the local nursing home.

Join us at: https://dversepoets.com

 

Old Songs

Last week we got together with some old college friends, and their spouses, from the late 1960s. During those years we sang together in a group we called the Optimists. The Folk Music era was in full swing and the songs of Peter, Paul, and Mary as well as many other musicians influenced our song choices. We rented a house on Lake Wiley and spent four great days together singing and catching up on our lives. It was a wonderful time. The songs and harmonies came back together just like it was yesterday!

Old Songs

Notes cling to the chambers of my brain

Hanging there stretched across my mind

The first three notes…………

Drawing me like a moth to a flame

Snagging me with silky smooth harmonies

Wrapping me tightly in a cocoon of pleasure

Lost in dusty webs of the past fifty years

Sucked in and stored away for evermore

Eight-legged bands are now long gone

Leaving me stuck in the recesses of history

In an egg sac // hatching out tunes of my own

Running here and there stringing new webs

Never forgetting how great it was

To be caught up in the old song’s web

Notes branded on my brain for ever

Creating an identity of who I am today!

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Photo: Dwight L. Roth