Dear Bob Dylan,

It’s raining sunlight and I am in the middle of waiting for my daughter to arrive home from school. I was reading a book of poetry by a prominent poet and many if not most of his lines made me think of you. So much so that I wished I could show you by leaning across a table, turning the page toward you and pointing with my finger.

I would say, read this one here. And you would. Perhaps you’d agree that it was good or that something in it spoke to you. Sometimes just the tone of a poem is enough. Oftentimes for me, it is the very words, the absolute music that thrusts through each line.

I love endings especially. I think the end can tell just how truly humble and honest a poet is. How many bones he willingly exposed, how many teeth he bared, how much of his great heart bled onto the page.

I love as well when a poem makes me ask: what next? And, where do we go from here?

I like that about your songs too. Though I often listen attentively while they’re playing, I listen in hindsight too when the music is no longer playing. When I’m alone in a room like I am now with no sound but the jostle of this keypad and my breathing.

However inadequate my memory is or how varied I might remember a line you sung, I have always believed in what you have to say. Or maybe it’s that I believe in how you say it.