Ambivalently Fiddled

I hadn’t played the violin
for too long, and it showed:
before I got it to my chin –
before it could be bowed –

its D string popped: unused, in place,
some moment long ago
as it lay unplayed in a case
when I’d thought to forgo

the curved wood creature it espoused
and lived to lend respect –
until it gave up, sick, unroused –
to die from my neglect.

Oh yes, I know that strings will break –
part of the everyday
experience of give and take
in instruments we play –

but something darker here obtains
in my sad fiddle, since
it’s felt the wrenching angry strains
of my ambivalence:

it sits there weeks and weeks alone
without me – left to fate –
and then when I try to atone –
it senses buried hate

which burns its red and fearful glow
into my heart and shoves
it through my arms and fingers, bow –
which tell it what it loves.



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