Ode to an OM 28 by Doug Adamz

I wonder, can you recollect,
whose fingers have touched your slender neck,
the curve of your waist, your plain cut crest,
whose arms have held you to their chest?
I wonder.

Who’s plucked or strummed your hundred strings,
what voices were raised, what songs did they sing,
big tent revival, or low, dark saloon,
who did you woo and what was their tune?

Whose blues snaked out into the inky night,
riding the thrum of your chords in flight?
Did you drive the fiddles at wild barn dances,
and lure the girls’ flirtatious glances?

Did you toil away in a band with brass,
christened with booze from some fumbled glass?
A journeyman’s ax, working and paid,
or just come out on Sundays to hum in the shade?

Were there silent seasons in attic or shed?
Of your lovers’ hands, how many long dead,
or old, weak, and creaky, 
     when they once danced for hours,
playing Fraulien and Wildwood Flower,
playing Fraulien and Wildwood Flower?

September 2010