Don't talk to the old man
on the ladder he's likely
cleaning eavestroughs

end to end full of leaves
kite string & black
beetles

He may mumble
teetering on the rungs
but don’t interrupt work

he has enough to handle.

The power of music
and friendship
heals dead connections;
a well-meaning member
of a jam session
offers me a guitar.
I politely decline,
embarrassed by my disability,
and they shrug.  Your choice.
The familiar curves
beneath my arm
like a woman
from my past,
my amnesiac left hand
reaches for the
muscle memory
of fifty years' practice.
After an agonizing minute,
the G chord miraculously plays,
as I played it at five,
the three big fingers alone
strong enough to hold it.
The switch to C impossible;
so I play a variation.
Doesn't sound bad with the group.
My God, I might play a D7
by the next time it comes around
in the song.
The gang is playing old standards,
Ohio State music;
three chords and a cloud of dust,
which suits my present skill(?) well.
I almost cried when a few tunes later,
we sang A Horse With No Name
to my accompaniment.

Beethoven was deaf, yet heard the Ode To Joy.
Hawking is paralyzed, and travels the universe.
I have three good fingers,
and no good excuses.

you did not see me crumblin
                                                    g
under the weight of my thoughts
you did not see the tear slip down,
rolling down my cheek

maybe you did not care.
maybe i'm tired of always being the second choice
maybe i want to feel important and loved and worthy
and maybe you can't do that for me
and maybe that's okay
i've lived my entire life like this,
what's a while more?

thank you for being there during all the good times,
they were few and far in between but
you were there i guess.
you were always there.

just never when i needed you most

i have mastered the art of being alone
now i am not quite sure how to be, together

there is something to
picking up my father's old guitar
and feeling it fit perfectly in my hands,
responding to my touch
the way it once did for him,
and playing chords to a song everyone knows,
but having it turn out somehow different,
my style and voice,
mingling with the echo of my father's,
to take someone else's words and music
and give them a new life.