Because I’ve leapt into my previously-avoided revisions (and have thus ceased having original thoughts), and because my refrigerator is now in my dining room (or what would be my dining room if we actually still had walls and rooms at our house), and because my girls have been on spring break this week (which means I’ve had to devote a good portion of my days to, um, frivolous fun), coming up with something thoughtful for Poetry Friday was going to be a stretch.

But lucky for me, Jama “Like a Rolling Stone” Rattigan offered up a writing prompt for today’s Poetry roundup! 
She wants some Bob Dylan lyrics, because afterall, Dylan considers himself a poet first and a musician second.

Bob Dylan lyrics. 
Poetry for everyman.
That I can do. 

I went through the requisite Bob Dylan obsession in college like the rest of ya’ll (in between takes of The Police and Fleetwood Mac and Journey and REM and The Grateful Dead. What a weird decade the 80s was.) I was particularly fascinated by his Joan Baez years. (I read that section of her memoir twice.) The idea of that much creative energy in one relationship is really compelling, even though they didn’t live happily ever after together forever (or even for very long).

I’m pretty sure I don’t have a favorite Dylan song; there are too many. But Boots of Spanish Leather is right up there. Here’s a little sampling:

Oh, I’m sailin’ away my own true love,
I’m sailin’ away in the morning.
Is there something I can send you from across the sea,
From the place that I’ll be landing?

No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true love,
There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’.
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled,
From across that lonesome ocean.

Predictably, things do not go well from here. The speaker keeps offering up gifts, even as she (or he) wanders ever deeper into the great beyond. The lover always answers, No, nothing, thank you. Just you, please. Only he (or she) says it more poetically, of course. Like this:

Oh, how can, how can you ask me again,
It only brings me sorrow.
The same thing I want from you today,
I would want again tomorrow.

And then, in the end, when realizing that the wanderer is not coming home soon — or at all — he asks for a pair of boots. 

Spanish boots. 
Of Spanish leather. 

There is something so just and, at the same time, so heartbreaking about those boots. 

Dang, I love that song.

A lot of folk have covered it, including Baez.
Here’s Nanci Griffith’s cover of it. (She put it on her Other Voices, Other Rooms album).

And if you go here, you can watch a slideshow of Dylan snaps set to the song. (Joan Baez makes the cut.)
So, I’m happy. Nostalgic. Satisfied. And itching for a long trip across the deepest ocean.
How about you?