The long back of a tall man by firelight,
bony-shouldered, gray-ponytailed,
sarcastic T-shirt faded, jeans patched at the butt, embroidered, frayed,
holding a guitarrón customized as a four-string bass
like a Bug souped up with a Ferrari engine:
Bent above it, he cups its round wood belly
to his flat belly like a spoon
and leans into each phrase so that it issues from his solar plexus
as he pushes, birthing melody into the night air outward
from the fire ring under the great oaks’ titanic branches.
His notes rise among the flickering limbs,
the strum and pluck of two guitars,
fiddle, harmonica, goatskinned djembe, and mix with the crickets’ chirruping
in crisp October starlight across the grassy mountainside,
the bass sounding the fundamentals under all,
the foundation of the firmament of harmony
and discord, rhythm and inflection,
whose edifice encompasses and overshadows all dominion
within the round wood belly of an instrument, and there must be
room enough inside it to have so ripe a tone.