Guitar String Tattoo

modeled after Billy Collin's "Litany"

You are the sandy moccasins at my stony stoop,

The beads in a box once strung on hemp.

You are the country side, rental car ride slipping hills

The hands-free downhill bike glide in the summer midnight.

You are the inks embedded and reading poems aloud,

The bamboo and the guitar string, the paint brush and sword.

 

However, you are not the abandoned chicken coop,

Dilapidated in the desolate yard by the compost heap.

You are certainly not the carnage strewn a quarter acre,

Gnarls of feather and bone spit out like your sunflower shells.

 

It is possible you are bullets in the clip,

Maybe even the smoke of the warm gun,

Or, the flint of the lighter's last vapory gasp.

But you are not even close to being the tent

Pitched at the base of steep eroding earth.

 

The river still runs past the sand and rocks,

Where we camped, paying no mind to your pretty lies,

Where I am the smirk in the photos.

 

It might interest you to know,

That I am the orange foam earplugs

Meant to muffle your reckless trigger fingers.

 

I also happen to be the fig tree your mother planted

Out back, in the corner, behind the blackberry bushes

Clenching onto the bottom-heavy flesh from a finger.

I am also the fire pit embers oscillating between glowing

And whisking away in black flakes into the wind drift.

 

But, don't worry; I will never be the guitar string tattoo.

You will always be the guitar string tattoo,

Not to mention the sword and-somehow-the bamboo.