It lays in its case like the feather of a majestic bird,
Cradled in deep red velvet,
Metallic silver with shimmering strings,
A guitar slightly younger than me,
Another noisy little brother.
It waits for our father,
The man who still dreamed of being a rock star at 35,
Or a blues player the more his hair tinged with grey,
Approaching the instrument’s silver hue.
It longs for the days it played with friends:
Keyboards and bass guitars and drum sets,
That buffeted the house with walls of sound.
When there was music and laughter,
And clucking of amber beer bottles.
The days before his calloused fingers had changed a hundred diapers,
And gently applied a thousand band-aids to scrapes.
It grows old sitting by itself,
Alone in the basement that once shook the rest of the house,
Dreaming of the next time
When my father will go back in time.
Back to when he was fifteen,
Back to a day before the silver feather was born.
First appeared in Tobeco Literary Arts Journal, 2016-2017
LaTrobe Barnitz 