Strings from Discovery by Bill Ackerbauer

Strings

I could change the strings
on my old guitar
but it wouldn't sound like new.
I tune it up
then down again
a sloppy whole step
to play "Louis Collins"
in B flat.

That's the key to the highway
out of my weatherbeaten upstate town
looking over the once-majestic Mohawk as
it snakes through the shadow
of the Adirondack foothills
where lumber and leather
rolled down the line
on the F, J & G
to the E-RI-E
a rusty, dusty, rustic
memory of mules
flat-bottom boats
the sweet stink of woodsmoke
on my clothes.

Some nights my guitar sleeps
in its sturdy case
and pines for a player
dreaming the valley below
is a delta
muddy water
rocking in a cradle
of mossgreen levees.
Dreaming the hills above
make a rugged blue ridge
of rocky tops
dark hollows
and sour-mashed sunlight
on wet red clay.

I could change the strings
on my old guitar
but the coffee's almost ready
and it's just a brokedown engine away
from a blind man
wailing into a tin can
barrelhouse burning
gravedigger looking me right in the eye,
just the way I like it.

• Acoustic
• Americana
• blues
• freak folk
• singer-songwriter
• vintage country
• Johnstown