Saturday, I was out doing errands when I spotted a guitar case at a yard sale.

I stopped and found a “Nobility” archtop — probably late 40s, early 50s, birdseye maple back, solid spruce top (pressed, not carved, for you aficionados out there, like Bill Campana), but with a wicked bow in the neck that wasn’t worth repairing.

The guy running the yard sale came over. “$250,” he said.

Needless to say, I thanked him and moved on. He was clearly irritated and jerked his thumb back to another case. “That one’s only 75 bucks,” he said.

I walked over to check it out. Inside was a 1971 Sadao Yairi classical that looked like it hadn’t been played in 30 years.

Sadao Yairi was the cousin of the guy who does the Alvarez-Yairi line of acoustic guitars. (Think Ani, think Bob Weir.) This guitar was one of his — handmade, all solid woods, in pristine condition. Signed and hand-dated label. While not a custom instrument, this was a really, really nice intermediate concert classical.

I talked him down to 65 bucks and took off with it.

Once I got it home and cleaned the dust off of it, I tuned it up to concert pitch and began to play…and realized that this was far more classical guitar than I was used to; I own a low-end but decent student Yamaha what I fool around with, but this was another animal entirely.

A good steel string instrument makes you sound better than you are. A good classical makes you sound worse, because it demands that you actually have classical technique; it makes you a better player because if you have any pride, it forces you to straighten up and fly right.

I am selling the instrument on eBay, hoping it goes to a serious student of the instrument, turning the money I hope to make from it over to my niece’s college fund; but I did get one thing out of it…

THE NEW GUITAR

This new guitar is stern
and lovely, shape less hourglass than pear,
broad in the neck and careful in tone.

It is unforgiving of
my sloppy technique, burns and buzzes
under my fat fingers like a trapped bee.

The small murders of each stunted chord and
dropped arpeggio fill the room
like a mass grave.

This is a determined massacre
born of desire: these hours working
to make it sing

the way it cries to sing
make me a singer too. Every easy guitar
led me to this one, as surely as a fire leads to ash.

Long ago, the receding Flood
brought dryness back to the
earth. The trees grew again, were felled,

quartersawn and planed into shapes
and stories. Someone made this guitar
for the tale of the struggle for the covenant.

I stretch my hand again, shake the cramp off,
raise the neck to play and play. I am terrible at this.
We are all terrible at this. We do it anyway.