The Walking Blues Become Poems

I walk with a stick and a dog, down river, up, no one can tell me how its done. A few understand

and sing as I pass—the songs are fine—but there are turns in a stream where songs fall apart, they’re only melody.

 

When I was a boy a stove abandoned and filled with crickets was opera—blind kid, twilight blues, the moon coming on blues, and so my first lesson. Later Auden would refine it: “the roses really want to grow”. 

 

Crickets sing a house—find homes—say something. 

 

Oh but the walking blues, songs to poems, walking with a stick and dog…