Momma don’t stop me from playing the geetar out on the front porch. I sit and fiddle with them tuning pegs, twistin’ this way an’ that ’til I get the sound just right to my ear. I don’t need nobody to tell me how, I just know when I hear the right sound.
The neighbors walk by an’ stop to hear me play. Sometime they smile, sometime they frown and shake they head. I don’t mind none, just keep on picking them strings, humming under my breath ‘til them words break out like sun from behind a gray cloud.
Miss Johnson from three houses down bring her kids by sometime; they like hearing me play. Miss Johnson say I’m gonna be a big star someday but I don’t believe it. I just like to play. My fingers get itchy without strings under ’em, so I scratch them by playin’ songs out here on the front porch.
I don’t know where the words come from, they just roll out of my head onto my tongue and drip from my lips into the air. I get loud sometimes, an’ Momma come out and tell me to hush it down now, baby’s ’sleep. But the baby like my songs, he giggle and coos like he havin’ a ball. Sometime he claps his little hands and to me, it’s better than any ol’ big audience.I look out from my chair and there’s a few folks out there, all lookin’ up at me. I stare at the dusty planks on the porch, I don’t know how to keep eye contact an’ all ’cause it sometime make me nervous. When I finish my song, they all clapping for me and I kinda shrug, mumble a word of thank’n and go on to the next one. An’ it is just fine. Right as rain. I smile for the people gathered out there at the gate, an’ I go on to the next song.
I play for awhile, ’til my head get tired and I feel out of breath ’cause I singing loud again, only Momma don’t stop me. She see that everybody just fine with me a playin’. An’ so is she.
(Photo credit: gianni from morguefile.com)
