​Les Wicks (Australia)

​Wind Instruments 
​
I honestly believed that the world was about to come to a crossroads, where money, war and society were all about to be forever altered. In the face of that absolute inevitability, the most logical thing seemed to sing. After all that time I’ve yet to come up with a better idea. Robin Williamson
 
We still look for Licorice McKechnie.
 
After the band broke up
of course she went to America.
Could be dead but almost certainly
somewhere west, the tumbleweeds
of faith curl the sands --
 
but Leena & I were there, she didn’t show.
We called across arroyos
wrote in highway dust.
There was only a little cash.
Summer howled its blues, haboobs
had been practicing… the slide --
that puke & grit assail the dunes like murder.
 
Our hungry cars chewed on beetles,
hopes went to shade & assumed a passive menace.
We couldn’t approach her most likely hangout,
the laneway was too damaged.
Perhaps Licorice had the love’s dementia,
Arizona does that
to any mild holiness.
 
So much smoke for just a few coughs of poetry.
Our irrelevance is durable,
effortless to maintain.
Freedom actually is free, but hazardous.
An email came in from Joshua Tree, California.
 
Backroads were renamed after decades
or abandoned, overgrown.
Joan is still busy. Jansch has gone. & Martyn.
Sting has a vineyard in Tuscany.
Arlo votes Republican.
 
For myself, I try
to put out a collector’s item every three years --
more feathers come in than royalties.
I have no complaints
while I search for Licorice McKechnie.