He hammers a wedge into the gap between the brace
and wood, then runs glue along the edge of the curves,
the plastic bottle loose in his grip. Weāre in his workspace,
a cabin in western Watauga County that took me
three hours to drive to. He ignores my pristine shirt
and says that the wood heās using is aged cherry
from an old log house. I watch his hands, follow
their deliberate trace as he tests the joins, gauges
the smoothness. I picture how, two weeks ago,
he boiled down those side pieces, made them bend
into shape like a Matisse torso, or a boat trying
to be Rita Hayworth. He carved the head at one end
of its three-foot neck, curved over itself like the arm
of a Georgian couch. Now he is whittling a tuning peg,
the horn handle of his knife tucked into his palm.
He shifts its incline, rounding the corners. He makes
three pegs before measuring out the frets, their precise
irregularity, and laying metal into the grooves. It takes
some hours to do all this. I sit down as he sketches
out the sound holes, and while he cuts them out I look on
like a foreman in a factory. He unwinds and stretches
the three strings, tunes them like a rhyme scheme. Finally,
laying it flat, he plays it, his fingers downward, sliding
and can-canning in time. He says the songās āAura Leeā
but it sounds more like Elvis. I stand, and he wraps it in fabric,
handing the bundle to me at the door. I wave at him as I put it
into the trunk of my car. Outside, the forest smells like Air Wick.
-----------------------------------------------------
Here's a poem I wrote a while ago, while I was living in NC - realised I hadn't posted it on here. It's a bit more traditional than my usual stuff, but kinda shows how I was dealing with culture shock etc.
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