Traveling With Guitar
By Debra Marquart
For you can travel with a screaming red rolling bag
and float unnoticed on conveyors, through terminals
or you can lug half a moose rack from Maine
to Minnesota, carry it like a broken wing through airports
as my friend Gro did, and draw only the curious touches
of children waiting at gates. But dare to travel with a guitar
and invite confessions from strangers in pinstripe suits
of garage band summers, invite winks, gotcha smiles,
and devil’s horns rock on gestures. Invite finger points
and winks, the long tongue licks, and the rubberneck glance
to check if you are someone famous. To dare to travel
with a guitar is to mark yourself charismatic megafauna
of the airport terminal. Old friend, what else could I do
but carry you? I have stored you in closets, propped you
in corners, hunched over you late-nights, staring perplexed
at the mysteries of your neck. Body of my body, string
of my strings, see how the world began to hum and sing
that day at thirteen when I opened the big birthday box.
