In Search of the Wild Dulcimer
        for Jean Ritchie

I need something pure with
both a newborn

and dying woman's cry, each
connected to a single

line of light, one at its beginning
and another

at its end. Or is it more of a
curving river or a circle

of sound, unadulterated tremolo:
the dulcimer. I've found

Jean Ritchie, her ballad matching
her wild mountain

instrument, the one she made by hand,
the one born out of her

Scots-Irish Kentucky roots, a
simple incandescent strand

I somehow still hear
without much effort,

despite my rising deafness,
her voice and dulcimer

a single aural finger that points
to me. It grows both lonesome

and tremblingly full, a rain cloud
about to pour out

a host of voices from sky to
ground and back again.

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Copyright © 2018 Lana Austin All rights reserved
from Blood Harmony
Iris Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission