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’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, two Best of the Net Awards, the FutureCycle Poetry Book Prize, and have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer’s Almanac, and the Best American Poetry blog. Website: paulhostovsky.com