Alone on a hill above the festival, I listen past field noise
to the single bird note humming
off the prongs of a metal fork, and twist the keys
of my guitar, flat then sharper, trying to pull
all loose tension into line, to rest each bronze string
on the one clean level of sound all musicians strive for.
Then across the hill walks a fiddler coming from another jam
his bow pointing me out in the dark, his fiddle
fluttering under his chin, Bill Cheatum
already bridging the distance between us.
How long before his ear, pitched to those bright true notes,
brings to his face the blank disappointment of the moon,
and he saws the tune short,
walks off toward the field, the notes rising like sparks
around the campfires?
And these nights when you come home late from work
or whatever, still highstrung
and restless, and already turned in
I’m a case of insomnia, each sorry fret buzzing in my head,
or if by chance asleep, awakened
by your little torches of sound, the low opera
of a late-night movie, the click of your lighter-
How long do I lie in that room, waiting for a footfall,
the bright run of bracelets,
wondering how a night could be as wide as a field,
and why, when you lie down beside me, both of us silent,
I wonder again at the guitar, how anything studied so long
could suddenly go strange in my hand?
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