Keyboard Guitar

                      Hear that old soul stirrer slamming through the night
                      Tombstone train cuts its own daylight
                                                  --- Boz Scaggs, King of El Paso, 2001

                Slow to find a rhythm to slide
                my fretting hand from guitar neck
                to keyboard stroke and pause
                I tap out another draft seeing myself
                laid back on a porch in Santa Fe
                hearing a freight train engine
                blow west through town
                headed for the Las Cruces yard

                Type a bassline to thump qwerty keys
                up and down left and right
                Morph D chords into strings of words
                braced to shuffle on that upright dancefloor
                propped inside my laptop screen
                Fold major notes into paper planes
                and glide them down rocky mesas
                gilded by long evening light

                Listen to thirsty cottonwoods
                bowing toward the river
                their sheer rustle chiming lyrics
                which leave nothing more to be written
                nor played