Sermon of the Dreadnaught

The guitar: I take communion
daily in this shack of a church
with a moaner's bench rubbed
Smooth by repentant backsliders.
isten to the seventh note,
graced by God, it is my battle-axe,
a joyful noise no more modern
than that old-time religion
cooking on the woodstove
in my grandmothers' kitchens.
Holy ghosted, I have been washed
in the blackwater cypress swamp
that flows inside my guitar.
A solid top, and I play it righteous
as any stingy brim disciple that ever
has played a small town bus stop,
and I got a missing canine tooth
from the right side of my mouth
and now my gospel is cobalt blue.
I remember the purity of the old guys,
Lucky Strike smokers and homebrew
drinkers with open tunings, sanctified
impertections, scarred and battered
harmonies. They have introduced me
to the hollering haints who now hold
late night prayer service in my guitar.
I believe in the palm oil that anoints
the guitar. I believe in life as sure
as I believe in death. I confess
the ancestor spirits and their love
accompanies me. The bloodline
has dressed me in that glorious suit
that we only wear when we are
our true selves. In the ascending heat
there is a train of guitar moments,
boxcars of dualities in the everyday
choices that we make. I have been
delivered, blessed by this guitar
that brought me home from forty years
in the urban American deserts,
back to the piney woods of Carolina,
this old rugged guitar, my cross
to bear, this everlasting church
of the mule-driving sharecroppers.