Playing With Stevie

In a Stevie Ray mood, so
let these fingers fly around and sting
slow gems on “Lenny,” fiery speed
on “Couldn’t Stand The Weather,”
imagining my own clodhopper fingers
doing the work instead of what they can do:
just plodding through a change here,
a letter here, a phrase there and there,
change a single note to change the world
or my world perhaps; damn these meathooks
as what they are; unfeeling sharp slabs of metal
past the changes, too fast now and then too slow
as they regiment and stumble over ground
Stevie claimed lomg ago — still I try
now and then, up and down and maybe this time
I will strike one note well and then will try again
and over and fail after the small success of the one note
that suspended itself — a cold shot, singled out
in painful example one time after a hundred runs,
trending toward a thousand until I finally
fail utterly and turn back to the Word.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T