Life Is a Banjo by Paul Hostovsky

 

Image | Erika Wittlieb

Life Is a Banjo

 

Just ask the banjo players

and they’ll tell you

they didn’t choose the banjo

so much as the banjo 

chose them--and now 

they carry it around with them, 

this conjoined twin

whose big round head,

pale skin, funny-looking

fifth tuning peg like a misplaced 

thumb halfway up a forearm,

is part of them. Like

the body you didn’t choose.

Like the life you didn’t choose either.

Nobody gets to choose.

But you pick it up, you

dust it off, you put your 

arms around it and you try

to love it. And you try to make it

sing. You get yourself 

some fingerpicks and you

pick that damn thing like

the life you didn’t pick 

depended on it. 

© Paul Hostovsky

Paul Hostovsky

Paul Hostovsky’s poems and essays appear widely online and in print. He has won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. He makes his living in Boston as a sign language interpreter.

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