Banjo Dreams - July 30, 2025

I remember the day I arrived, when he

lifted me tenderly out of my black case

and gazed down with such love

I was born with four steel threads

poised above a rosewood fingerboard

anchored to a large steel and walnut disk,

for the first week, he held me

in his lap while the radio played

and I read his dream - to pluck me

faster and faster and someday turn

off the radio and fill the room with

toe-tapping happiness

years later, cleaning a closet, he sees the

banjo and reminisces, and like so many times

before, another aspiration lay, abandoned

he undoes the four catches and slowly opens

the case – it’s as beautiful as he remembers –

but when he goes to pick it up

a dead dream falls out