The old Cafe’ Espresso in Woodstock, New York hosted a variety of entertainment including folk singers Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and new entertainers like Bob Dylan. The Espresso was the summer gathering place for coffee or hot chocolate with my school friends after seeing a foriegn film at the playhouse. Bob Dylan began singing there nightly when he was seventeen to pay for his room above the coffee house. I will never forget the first time I saw him sing!
Cafe’ Espresso
Ribbons of coffee house smoke
Dancing with espresso steam caught me
Trying to find the spaces between your words.
You sat on a stool, legs wrapped in tight , faded jeans.
Your style of singing… it’s stringing
I heard someone say.
Do you ever breathe?
My girlfriend’s chatter changed the scene.
She’d heard about you from the crowd at school.
They’re saying Bob Dylan sings to trees,
Sleeps in barns, drinks rain out of broken cups,
He’s insane, a nut…
I wondered how it must feel to sleep in barns.
What did it cost to be so free and only seventeen?
As I think back on that night,
Singing at the Cafe’ Espresso,
You were the way of summer in Woodstock;
A song, a harmonica, a walk down Tinker Street,
Tourists, arts and crafts displayed.
Still, I recall you as fey,
And remember how I hummed off key
The tunes you so easily played.
I saw in your eyes the distance that defined
The same shy part of me.
The faded purple circles left behind in our minds
Made by the bruises of a thought too deep,
The passion to live a dream.
I’ll always wonder why dreams so easily
Escape reality… but I am glad you wrote the songs.
So often I think about them when the moon looks up at me
From the cream in my coffee
Until the moment is gone.
I’m glad you wrote the songs…
Poetry on Wings 