Woodstock

Try and we’ve gotta get
outta this creation, this place. 
I keep thinking
about the children’s crusade,
how it ended with a whimper. 
How it was swallowed by
every mile it progressed. 

The setting sun ping-pongs
rays off the back yard.

A grackle dives at the fallen
spruce, the wine is Chilean,
as red as blood flowing from
an unhealed wound.
I no longer fall into Joplin,
soar with a guitar’s whine.

There’s work on Monday and
the dream of motorcycling
across Canada is as dead as
the ecstasy in small rebellions. 

(Watching Joplin at Woodstock on Youtube, thinking about where the world has gone since then.)