Stringed Instrument Collection

You began it the third fall you were alone,

and soon they surrounded you: mandolins,

mandolas, guitars—cutaways, dreadnaughts—

the upright bass. You spent most of those nights

with the jazz guitar, learning Birdland and Twilight Time.

The others hung from inlaid necks, scrolled heads,

patient, mute, the way they hang now from

these walls. You claim no wood is ever dead,

even if it’s gone to fire and risen as heat,

and think of them not as possessions but as guests

who will survive you, pass to other hands

the way they passed to yours. Sometimes a name

called out, a cough, a laugh will echo here—our voices

in the hollows of their bodies, for now, sustained.