somebody’s discarded guitar
was my sign
like a book of music
open to the first page
just sitting there
atop a box of old clothes –
before running my fingers
along its fretted neck,
I’d already chosen it
for my next twenty years
this drifting debris
of someone else’s old flood
washed up in a yard sale –
I slapped down my money
and grabbed that guitar’s waist
turned back
to the traffic
drove back home,
struck my new rock star stance in my head
looking up at the sky
from time to time
as if a storm had passed
and there ought to be a rainbow.
In Between Hangovers 