Poetry By Ethan McGuire

James Loesch CC




THE BLUEGRASS PLAYERS


My father, driving down I-44--
still peering through his wipers and the hárd rain--
reached over to the dial, searching for
at least one halfway decent Country station.
He took his eyes off of the road to laugh
and say to me, “Ah, now, that is the stuff!”

The 107.9 Coyote at the Lake
played mostly boring mainstream slop.
Today was different though—Southern Rock
for one whole hour: ZZ Top,
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, or Lynyrd Skynyrd,
Molly Hatchet—Dad just stroked his beard.

I chuckled then and said, “It would appear
we’re listening to good ole Rock ‘n’ Roll
on our way to play Bluegrass here!”
Dad furrowed his thick brows and said, “Well, on the whole,
this music has much more in common
with Bluegrass than this station usually can summon.”

We played a Bluegrass show with Uncle Malcolm’s band,
and afterward we jammed, as was expected,
but only joined as long as we could stand--
the guys who stayed were split, affected
by both the old and newer ways of playing,
without a master’s guiding hand—for staying.

My father and my uncle stood around
and talked as we packed up our instruments,
but even there, as thoughtful and profound
as they still are, their interlocutors
fell damned far short (of those two intellects)--
their old and new confusions made them less.

Their talent and their passion too unfocused,
too split between tradition and progression,
they could not think or feel quite right, so missed
the chance to make the abstract concrete, their obsession:
to parrot what they’d heard—so dour.
But Dad just laughed, “That wasn’t worth an hour!”

My Uncle made an ódd statement before
we loaded up the van to drive back home:
“We never would have traveled out this far--
unless we were the kind of men to roam--
to play and sing for nothing, like we do,
before the day the Interstate came through.

“And yet, new things like this, connecting worlds,
will likely mean the death of what we love:
this Bluegrass. Because Folk belongs to worlds
of people who must lean on what they have.
Now, we don’t need it; we just like it, so
Bluegrass will fade away like all things do.”

I don’t play music like I did
before I left to move across the country.
My dusty Gibson F-5 sits beneath its lid
unless I use it to spark creativity.
I sold my Martin HD-28 guitar
while saving for a house and car.

But the poet Bashō wrote it well:
the seed of music and of thought took root
decades ago; the vines bear flowers still. That smell
brings back old times—the clear notes of a flute.
Or in my case, the notes of fiddles, banjos,
guítars, mandolins, and upright basses.

Now, Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs do it,
transporting me back to the Ozark hills,
or when my brother Seth and I duet--
guitars come out, we flex old skills.
Our Dad and Uncle Malcolm were our masters,
both helping us avoid the old and new disasters.

We drove back home at midnight, a three-hour drive,
but had no trouble being on the lookout.
We nearly had a wreck, were glad to be alive--
an eighteen-wheeler had a blowout,
but Dad drove for a living, swerved just right,
and brought us safely home that night.

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Ethan McGuire is a writer and a healthcare cybersecurity professional. His essays, fiction, poetry, reviews, and translations have appeared in The Emerald Coast Review, Literary Matters, The New Verse News, and other publications, and his first chapbook, Songs for Christmas, came out this year. He lives with his wife and their daughter in the Florida Panhandle on the Gulf of Mexico.