Allman-Brothers’ Blue

 

And the sun never sets

On Duane Allman and Dickey Betts

On their acid trip around the world.

The rainbow bends but never breaks

And the sun is strong but always kind

When with all the turns a swallow takes

(And all that makes the swallow turn)

The Allman Brothers seek and find

In electric riffs on two guitars

And sunshine in the Mason jars

A bliss beyond the Blues,

The skies above the Blues—

Allman-Brothers’ blue:

A summer’s azure

So dizzily pure

Your hearing is seeing

The blue joy of Being.

Think of van Gogh in pursuit of his yellow,

Think of Bach and his browns for the cello,

Coltrane as a kid in a candy store,

And Vivaldi’s four seasons as summer, summer,

Summer again, and summer once more.

And the sun will never set again

On the melodic riffs of Betts and Allman,

For here by Dickey Betts

Was our truest song of protest—

Of all we destroyed to be saved

And all we saved to destroy,

That an age however depraved

Would steal none of our joy.

And the ear can see as the gazing eye

The swallowtail’s rock-climb of solid blue sky,

Can feel the warmth in a hand’s soft curl

On the waist of a Georgian country girl.

Let their cautionary tale be told—

To the young (alas) by the old;

And when the sun never sets

On Duane Allman and Dickey Betts,

Who’s surprised by the splashing sun-drizzle

Or the first falling flakes of summer snow?

Or when the stars come out at noon

And share blue sky with the sun of June,

The garish sun, in Allman-Brothers’ blue—

Where the chaste new moon is bathing too

And the rainbow is always unfurled;

The laughing sun, the sun that never sets

On Duane Allman and Dickey Betts

On their acid trip—a good trip

(“very good”)—on their acid-dropping trip

All the way around the world.

 

 

 

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