The Fretboard

In offering
to teach
a friend
a few chords
I thought
of my last
remaining
unsold guitar:
the acoustic
my dad bought
me for my twentieth
birthday.
It sits in
my closet
untouched in its
case
like a sheathed sword
an untold tale
a love that
should've been
but won't.

The songs
the lines
the lives
I could've written
supercede the
ones I've forced.
Sometimes there's
more power
in the potential
to create
than in
the creation
itself.

You can't fall short
of what
may have been;
there's beauty
in that promise.
It's why Red left
his harmonica
unskinned.



Currently reading:
"American Primitive" by Mary Oliver