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Stars In My Beard

by Tom C. Hunley

Wade out into night
catch you some stars
the music said to me
as the singer/guitarist at Tidball’s
shook out the last lonely arpeggios
& my wife at home dreamed she could lift
a fallen log off of our kids
at the same moment
as this new song made me think of her
waist-long hair when we were young
at another long-ago rock show.
Call it noise. Call it one sure way
to feel alive. The singer’s red high heel
dangled above the edge of the small stage
then dropped, apple, wind-picked
last year’s worries flung
into the mosh pit to be trampled
and she stayed on stage
guitar humming that this would be the year
she prevised in the pawn shops of Duluth
fumbling for notes on a guitar
to match the ones in her head.
Her song made a space for itself
in the night, floated,
joyously there but soon gone
smooth stone a child skips
across a pond