Electric Guitar

                        for Pattie Boyd

Hollow body, solid body, Archtop, Strat, or Flying V,
my shape’s a pitted avocado; a frying egg, yolk broken;
or nearly any Braque; my dark sounds utter hyperbole,

as in Eric’s bottleneck falsetto to his Layla—formerly
George’s something all too much—her gold ringlets
bloating Slowhand’s bell-bottom jeans with Blues.

Plenty other muses teased voltage from my pickups,
but the duende she awoke could play, until who knew
whether I fed back through her or she through me?

                                                                      A departure from Rilke