09. Ode To An Old Guitar

ODE TO AN OLD GUITAR
September 10, 2010

I wonder, if you can still recollect,
whose fingers have touched your slender neck,
the curve of your waist, your clean cut crest,
whose arms have held you close to their chest?

I wonder who’s strummed on your hundred strings.
Whose voices were raised, what songs did they sing?
Big tent revival, or low, dark saloon,
who were you courting, and what was their tune?

Whose blues slinked into the inky night,
Riding the thrum of your chords in flight?
Did you drive the fiddles at wild barn dances,
Did you lure the young girl’s and their flirting glances?

You were born in the year of the great Wall Street crash,
Did you sit on the shelf, ‘cause no one had cash?
Did you make the rounds of the railroad camps,
Playing songs of the workers for hobos and tramps?

I wonder, did you toil in a band with brass,
Christened by booze from some fumbled glass?
A journeyman’s ax, working and paid,
or just come out on Sundays to hum in the shade?

Were there silent seasons in attic or shed?
Of your lover’s hands, how many long dead,
or old, weak, and creaky, when they once danced for hours,
playing “Beautiful Brown Eyes” and “Wildwood Flower”,
playing “Beautiful Dreamer” and “Wildwood Flower”?