Shari’s Solo
by Michael Brockley
Shari takes the stage with the Earth Tones for the season’s First Friday Farmland Cultural Center concert. She plays mandolin on “Orphan Girl.” “The Circle Game.” And guitar on “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” Her years spent massaging Spanish instructors and first violins have numbed the fingers of her strumming hand. The toll from kneading tense shoulders, from bearing up slouched postures. Or, she suspects, summer mornings pruning the vegetables and flowers in her garden with the snips she keeps in a pocket on her smock. She says she can chord but must think about finger placements. Her fretboard talent regressing to deliberation. She squeezes the out-of-tune hand, thinking of switching to maracas and focusing on her vocals. Rubs her right shoulder and pulls her right hand into a fist. The band launches into “Across the Great Divide.” A Kate Wolf cover. Shari studies her finger work. Stills her hand when the duet arrives. Inhales and holds a breath before she exhales the verses in harmony with her husband. When she sings of crossing the borderline, Shari rests her strumming hand on top of the mandolin. Smiles when the rivers change directions. Her voice arising from the headwaters of song. Ascending from gloria through hosanna to hallelujah.
Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in Alien Buddha, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, The Parliament Literary Journal, and Prole. Poems are forthcoming in Stormwash: Environmental Poems and Punk Noir Magazine.