After months of letting it
lie idle in its case
and because my heart
was breaking for our daughter
and for her unborn
daughter whose own heart
the doctors say
will require surgery at birth
and more surgeries to follow
assuming she survives the first
last night I took out the old flamenco
guitar made for me
by my friend Les Stansell
using native sitka spruce
that he himself had milled
and played that saddest and most
soulful of the toques
a cry from the parched soil
of Andaluz
the toque Lorca must
have had in mind
when he invoked the guitar
as a heart
wounded by five swords