Granda thought he’d learn to play guitar
so he crafted from his dusty store
of model airplane paraphernalia
a perfect sounding ukulele.
In spite of this unorthodox guitar
he quickly came to learn the whole twelve-bar
blues: Give him his dues, he practiced daily,
he played all day and he shook the ceiling.
It wasn’t that she didn’t have the heart
to tell the old man that he had no tone.
It wasn’t that each time he dropped a note
he stopped and played the whole thing from the start:
Yet Grandma took exception to his playing
and she took the scissors to his strings.