Uncle Willard's hands were shaped much like
my mother's, though larger, with flat-tipped fingers
able to reach and find what my mother called
hollow-bodied -- a box, some players called it --
beautiful and mysterious to the eyes of a young child,
too shy to sing but eager to gather those secrets.
He'd come by on Saturdays, or Sunday after church,
to our place in the housing projects, asking
if she wanted to do some picking, over coffee,
knowing already that she did -- of course she did.
It was only later, much later, that my mother
told me how he had made the trip to the hospital
when I was born, after Dr. Sergeant -- the man
who had delivered her other four babies
and remembered them all by name -- told her
that I was dying, unable to gather and hold
enough oxygen, that I would not last the night.
He arrived, mom said, well past visiting hours, with
his guitar, and his worn and annotated Bible,
anointed my head with oil -- for he was a preacher
as much as a player -- reading passages of scripture,
praying the long autumn hours into morning;
and I am sorry now that I did not speak to him of
this during his lifetime; I am sorry that I have waited
all these years -- decades of unintended silence --
simply to thank him for drawing from my small lips
those first few gasping attempts at song.
