The Old Guitar

Finding the juju in the harmonic oscillations of an old friend.

What tones will call me away from the laundry room?

From that room any music will summon!

But in the garden, immersed in color and scent

I require sweeter sounds

perhaps assistance from the house, from the wind,

whistling through windowpane cracks,

the hum of the furnace

sending hot water through pipes

out radiator vent,

hissing a high note like Steven Tyler or Chaka Khan.

Maybe a quartet or sextet

of the souls residing within these walls,

accompanied by the Ovation six-string band leader

or twelve string Yamaha singer

will call for me from anywhere and nowhere

to negate this senescence,

embrace the rocker within,

coax me into remembrances of song and dance that

fell between the cracks.