My Brother's Guitar

Everytime I play your guitar I think of ghosts

and Sweden and what might have been

had you not been our Father's son

I calculate ages...I was nine

when you became a Marine

I was eleven and left behind

when you came home as tears and a telegram

our mother's altar in the corner

where your guitar sat as a testament

to your 24 years, that never collected dust

You know Ma....

Her rules, a collar on the shirt for dinner

a language spoke, Russian and German

didn't count a musical instrument played

the recital of classic poetry, Sunday trivia.

On the doorstep these years later

I think you died running away.

I was 10 the last time I saw you

in Dress Blues before a mirror

you asked me to brush cat hair

before meeting Smokey Joe

at the sportsman grill on Congress

as I swiped just a child across the uniform

you told me "There are perfections in life"

those are bad last words, I didn't realise this

you left with that Freelander girl

who would have thought you were not invincible?

That you would end as such a sibbling shadow.

You were not around for the amazement of divorce

Mother got tight with Christy Pascious

ended up owning half of Portland.

Moved our immigrant asses to blue blooded Kenebunkport

and is still working on membership to the yacht club.

Our Grandfather died, secrets in tact

a helleva funeral, Politicians and Whitehouse representatives

to insure he was silently dead. I came though I too had run away

It happened in my senior year, a dream of you

and Annapolis. A public throwback

led me to the theft of your guitar.

I hitchhiked to Natchitoches LA to see where Jim Croce Died

I stole your guitar and took it with me

played it in a huge field under one tree that stood

stoicly hit by Croce's airplane.

I have owned your 64 Goya Guitar since.

It has been with me around the world

and through the middile of it once,

It has even my sailors mark

a cat's face many years inscribed.

I am now old and grey and fat

I understand this guitar's history

how Martin not wanting to compete

bought them out devastating a town in Sweden

that would have hidden you, had you desired.

I sit on the stoop of my house

playing your guitar, wondering

the discussion we will have,

pondering how we will deal with notes and chords

If when we meet, I am wiser than you?