"Guitar" by Susan Laughter Meyers POET OF THE MONTH OF MAY 2011

Susan Laughter Meyers writes:

“This poem was  inspired by Boccherini’s Guitar 

Quintet #4 in D Major. I was listening to 

it while writing, and soon the music became 

the poem.”

Guitar

On any given night it picks its way 

down the canyon, one step

almost in front of the other—agile enough 

to slip by whatever spells trouble. 

Forget fear. It slides down rocks, if it has to, 

to reach bottom. By day, a red bandana 

or straw hat, and why not?

No map, just crosshatch and parallel.

It inhales the heat, and the pinched cold

creeping off the mountain. 

It lives alone, turns its back to the wolves. 

Say it's a tin cup with bent handle. 

Peyote in full bloom. A train 

pulling rich cargo across the horizon. 

Tequila. A thumbnail piercing the skin 

of a lime, the ripe shower that follows.

First published in Crazyhorse; rptd. in 

Keep and Give Away (University of South Carolina Press, 2006).