It's Sara Louise for Sharing

          by Exene Karros

It’s Sara Louise for the hippy days, a
tribute to Dylan and Kerouac, joints
smoked lakeside, love
made in tents, cars
driven up to 110 on the Mass Pike traveling
from Boston past Seneca
Falls, way beyond.
Eventually the map became
unnecessary, no strings,
no binding ties, only the
continually expanding
horizon and open road.

It’s Sara Louise for the days of
spontaneity. Sara for Dylan’s
Sara, his Muse, his Gypsy, and
Louise, Louise and her hand full of
rain, all right, just near
delicate.

It’s Sara Louise for the youth
remembered, the wild, the good,
the times now kept on a shelf.
A souvenir, a memento, like
a snow-globe brought down only on the
rainiest days, the sleepless nights, handled for a
minute as the snow swirls, settled, then
returned again to the shelf.

Notes on "It's Sara Louise for Sharing"

​The hippie days, the joints, love, car rides, and they knew they would be separating as summer rolled over and my mother swelled, they tried not to argue, eyes kept downshifted, theirs was a dull domesticity, and so it was discussed, rather decided: if a girl, Sara Louise.

Rumor had it that Sara (Dylan’s muse, the Scorpio-sphinx) came down one morning to breakfast to find Dylan and an Asian model eating pancakes sharing the travel section, “if you don’t like it you can leave” was the explanation.

It was my father who left, taking the fake leather luggage, the Dylan records, the silver-framed portrait of him and my mother standing cliff’s edge over Seneca Falls, leaving behind the key, the bed linens, the fine china.

A joint-custody arrangement signed easily along a dotted line, Sara Louise: shared.