Farewell with a Guitar
The bronze strings seem harder to bend.
They cut his fingers more than they once did.
His ragged fingernails screak wolf tones
echoing through cracks in the cypress sides.
The 4th and 5th he plays might be
4 and 1/8th or 5 and 1/16th.
He keeps unkempt time, the tempo
of a shabby suit or the tattered flag
of a diminished nation flapping
in gusts before a thunderstorm.
Why did we expect virtuoso
arpeggios from the old troubadour?
He drank at noon from a bottle
he would empty by sunset.
Let him strum a chord here,
in the living room, to close the evening.
Let the gravel in his throat,
more percussive than lyrical,
drone, out of tune and out of time,
his misremembering of an old folk song.
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