Dug Folk Fest 26 #1

hard banjo
smooth
old finger picked guitar
steel  National
gravel voices
old songs

I'm not much

I’m not much of a deipnosophist—

I sit and listen to better table-talkers

I might look lost in a funk,

but I’m just watching the board

tracking every conversational

checkmate and zugzwang

not antisocial, nor a solivagant,

just solving puzzles with pizzazz—

the crossword’s clues feeding me

new words to keep me quiet-busy

some might call it sniffishness

but they’d be wrong

I’ll speak my mind one-on-one

it's only in a crowd I clam up—

the tiny bones in my ear vibrating

to a silent ululation