Just Another Guitar

It’s the stains under the strings
that make a guitar a guitar.
I’ve always read those stains before I bought one

but this one — a new guitar —
has none.  It’s up to me to sully it.
Up to me.

That magic name from Nazareth
on the headstock means nothing
if I can’t make it heard.  “Martin”

is just a spell without power
if a magician never learns its secret language;
it’s just another guitar.  Another one

in the collection.  A trophy
won without having been played for.
A symbol of consumption.

Having isn’t doing, isn’t being.
I play it now while thinking that I own a Martin
and am playing it, but when I am a player,

when that happens at last,
there won’t be any reason to speak of
the name.   It will be less a Martin

than a scarred and dirty beast
full up with me and who I am.
Up to me.  I bend to it and begin.