Summer 2007
Strings
A boy in Kentucky hears his uncle
fiddle through his nights. Gypsy
tunes and Irish reels riff
in his mind and stick.
Someone gifts him a mandolin.
He fingers the neck
takes the open fifths
into the choir of his heart.
He learns the strings, first
strumming and plucking
then brushing and picking.
They vibrate, then ring,
sing back to the camp fires
in Romania, back to the suppers
of lamb and mint, back
to the baby dozing
as her father unwraps
his cobza and casts out
a tune for the rising moon.
Marianne
Worthington is the author of
Larger Bodies Than Mine, a poetry chapbook, and the reviews editor for
Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine. She lives, writes, and
teaches in southeastern Kentucky, and is learning to play the mandolin.
"Strings" was inspired by Bill
Monroe's story-song "Uncle Pen," although Monroe is not specifically
named in the poem, and the story took on a surprising past life in the
writing. "Strings" was first published in The Emancipator,
Spring, 2007.