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