A little poetry

Strings

I could change the strings

on my old guitar

but it wouldn't sound like new.

I tune it up

then down again

a sloppy whole step

to play "Louis Collins"

in B flat.

That's the key to the highway

out of my weatherbeaten upstate town

looking out over the once-majestic Mohawk

snaking through the shadow

of the Adirondack foothills

where lumber and leather

rolled down the line

on the F, J & G

to the E-RI-E

a rusty, dusty, rustic

memory of mules

flat-bottom boats

sweet stink of woodsmoke

on my clothes.

Some nights my guitar sleeps

in its sturdy case

pining for a player

dreaming the valley below

is a delta

sloshing muddy water

rocking in a cradle

of mossgreen levees.

Dreaming the hills above

make a rugged blue ridge

of rocky tops

and dark hollows

sour-mashed sunlight

on wet red clay.

I could change the strings

on my old guitar

but's the coffee's almost ready

and it's just a broke-down engine

away from a blind man

wailing into a tin can

barrelhouse burning

gravedigger looking me right in the eye

just the way I like it.

                                      - Bill Ackerbauer © 2005