This is an instrument
I’ve never fully understood —
at first sight it was
everything I dislike in a guitar —
but it works, somehow,
most of the time.
Big body, blonde maple
ribs, blonde spruce top
and decoration from the butt
all the way up the neck
to the head. Brand new, too —
no vintage splendid ruin
with the nicks and scratches
to tell all its previous owners’ stories
and prove its worth.

Till now I have always counted
on age’s cachet to make me love
a guitar: checking the patterns
of wear and tear to try and puzzle up
the best way to play it, play it
as it always has been played,
make it tell me what it knows.
I’ve loved best of all
a grown up guitar.

But now I play this infant
and more and more
no instrument has ever been
more dead on right for me: the thump
of the woody bass, the ring
of hard treble
and brightness, brightness
on every stroke and strum.
It tells me everything
I’ve always needed to know.

Sure, there are nights
when it hurts
to play it
for hours at a time,
wrapping myself around
its wide pale waist,
both arms gone to needles
and pins as the fingers
squeeze frets and
stumble across strings,
pulling out
flat old songs and odd
noodlings of new tunes
that sound suspiciously
like old songs anyway.
On those nights it hurts
to hear the maple first resist me,
then reluctantly give
just half of itself up
because it knows
there’s no one warmer
and better loved around.

More often these days,
it’s more than a tease.
It’s becoming comfortable enough
to play with me through
the wrecking of my hands,
play through our mutual
bulk and inexperience
to get the sound we seek.
This is starting to be joy.

And then there is the peace that comes
from knowing that someday
someone will see my own marks on this one,
my signatures all skull-weary
and blue tears, and it seems
all I need to do
is grit my teeth and keep learning
how to make them mean more
than first impressions might lead one
to believe.

1.
Star: a sharp response
to this blunt question: “what if
I never get there?”

2.
Shroud: reservoir, urn;
grey coat of many collars.
Put it on. Forget.

3.
Death: a shrouded star
wished upon hard enough to
shine, briefly, for you.

— written 7/1/07 at the Java Hut; inspired by another’s work