Little Wing Blues

Playing my oldest guitar
on the couch,
noodling a familiar tune
while the fans whirl
and the sun shines
brightly, but not
brutally so; not too sad
this afternoon, glad to be
able to play. Yet
I fear this will end
before I learn to play
“Little Wing” as I want it
to be played, with it
coursing through me,
for when the song moves
under my fingers,
I do not move,
and that makes me fear
that time has run out.

It’s not a song I adore
the way I love a good old blues,
that storm that lurks
in every note, that sense
of chaos just beyond the order;
“Little Wing”
carries something else, the calm
after a massive blowdown,
a song to sing while sitting
with your head in your hands
on a massive fallen oak,
then look up and see the sun
bright, but not brutally so,
and a new clearing all around.

It’s not that I don’t play it well;
I play it well.  It’s not that the guitar
isn’t right for the sound I want; the guitar
is the right guitar and finds a voice
through the notes just fine, ringing
when it’s meant to ring, the high notes
belling at the right times; no, it’s not
that I don’t play it well or I’ve got
the wrong guitar;
I think instead it’s that
the storm is never done for me.
That’s why I love the blues, I think,
its center in the howl of the moment.

So I bend over this ancient body
once again, and hold its neck up
while try to imagine
how it is to walk through clouds
and be still at the same time;

how to find
the fallen oak and see it
as a throne, and not think
about what is crushed below it,
and not dwell on anything,
anything,
that has been taken from me.