always seem to find some way to be drenched.

Currently listening to: Chris Thile - "Bridal Veil Falls"


"The Rain Guitar"

The water-grass under had never waved
But one way. It showed me that flow is forever
Sealed from rain in a weir. For some reason having
To do with Winchester, I was sitting on my guitar case
Watching nothing but eelgrass trying to go downstream with all the right motions
But one. I had on a sweater, and my threads were opening
Like mouths with rain. It mattered to me not at all
That a bridge was stumping
With a man, or that he came near and cast a fish
thread into the weir. I had no line and no feeling.
I had nothing to do with fish
But my eyes on the grass they hid in, waving with the one move of trying
To be somewhere else. With what I had, what could I do?
I got out my guitar, that somebody told me was supposed to improve
With moisture - or was it when it dried out? - and hit the lowest
And loudest chord. The drops that were falling just then
Hammered like Georgia railroad track
With E. The man went into a kind of fishing
Turn. Play it, he said through his pipe. There
I went, fast as I could with cold fingers. The strings shook
With drops. A buck dance settled on the weir. Where was the city
Cathedral in all this? Out of sight, but somewhere around.
Play a little more
Of that, he said, and cast. Music-wood shone,
Getting worse or better faster than it liked:
Improvement or disintegration
Supposed to take years, fell on it
By the gallon. It darkened and rang
Like chimes. My sweater collapsed, and the rain reached
My underwear. I picked, the guitar showered, and he cast to the mountain
Music. HIs wood leg tapped
On the cobbles. Memories of many men
Hung, rain-faced, improving, sealed-off
In the weir. I found myself playing Australian
Versions of British marching songs. Mouths opened all over me; I sang,
His legs beat and marched
Like companions. I was Air Force,
I said. So was I; I picked
This up in Burma, he said, tapping his gone leg
With his fly rod, as burma and the South
west Pacific and north Georgia reeled,
rapped, cast, chimed, darkened and drew down
Cathedral water, and improved.


[James Dickey, 1962]