Words and Images for the Fall

My friend and teacher Joan Dobbie has been wading through quite a few emails from me about The Song Is.. and its various contests.  She finally sent me a poem from her book Woodstock Baby: Made in Boston.   The formatting for this poem was tricky to do on Blogger, but I hope that you enjoy its twists and turns.  In more ways than one, it is a moving poem.



TRIPPING WITH RYAN
AT THE BOSTON TEA PARTY LISTENING TO THE STEVIE MILLER BAND
Joan Dobbie (C) 1988-2004

MUSIC
           throbbing in the skin
                     of the instruments
                               pulsing
                                     in the breath
                     of our vision
            Moving in the flesh
      of our hands
  where we touch
pink on pink
       neon
   reflected
          In the river
                   MUSIC
           that Moves
                  like the life
                       underwater
                           MUSIC
                   that bites in
             the flesh
       of our brain
  licks at
      the rough plaster walls
         of this room
                     slides over arches
                                      Into caverns
                                                 flutters
                 in the pungent strobe dark
                                    of the air
                        where we sit
                     eye to eye
                tongue to tongue
         Everything
                is breathing
                           MUSIC
                               underfoot
                   in our bones
          in the folds
                     of our heart
                                   MUSIC
                         is alive
                           is a woman
                                  She is
                                    twitching
                              yawning
                         stretching
                             rising
         to fill the soft swollen
                                      bed
                        of my groin
                She is love
      He is here

      I am water

Joan also sent me an image of a word art picture poem, which she had created at a recent conference. This poem captures the 1960's creative spirit and blurring of boundaries when musicians were poets and poets were artists and...

copyright Joan Dobbie -- 2014

Joan's Bio

Joan (Thaler) Dobbie writes, sculpts and teaches yoga, in Eugene, Oregon. She has two grown children and six rapidly growing grandchildren, all of them much too far away... She has a 1988 MFA in Creative Writing from the U of O. For the past thirty years she's published, taught and promoted poetry. Most recently she co- edited BEFORE THERE IS NOWHERE TO STAND, Palestine/Israel, Poets Respond to the Struggle (Lost Horse Press, 2012) and THE MANY FACES OF HATHA YOGA (KENDALL/HUNT 2012-2013.)

And, yes, she did attend the original Woodstock and did live in the Boston/Cambridge Mass. area between the years of 1969 and 1974. It is from her real life experiences that these poems emerged, around fifteen years after she left Boston, finally to find themselves in print twenty five years after that!

Woodstock Baby is available through The Unforgettable Press:  http://theunforgettablespress.blogspot.com/