On Fiddler's Green (for John Hartford)

Last summer I found you up in the Missouri woods
dancing and fiddling with old Homer Dillard
under a gazebo in the moonlight.
Two common fiddlers.


On a muddy street in Portage de Sioux
hung out on a curve of the river
I saw you in the misty future
working horse hair into a bow.

I thought I saw you in the pilothouse of a
riverboat
beyond the stilthouses, dancing a deckhand's waltz.


Winter, I looked for you in Natchez.
Were you fiddling or sipping gumbo in a damp
cajun club?


Meet me in Ponchartrain for oysters and sasparilla
when the river sluices down its muddy secrets.
My love is common, like the river.

harp, Fayetteville, Arkansas 1980