Ode To Chris Thile’s Receding Hairline

  There was that decade of highlights in everyone’s
  hair, when you couldn’t be a pop group
  without a glossy treatment, a bright edge
  that even folk revival took a glazing to. Nowadays
  the mandolinist wears a professor’s overcoat,
  newgrass on the slow train flight of fancy. Nothing
  about it sucks, like your reception in Ireland or how
  you said it sucked when it rained on your stage in
  Memphis and you crowded with the Watkins under a tent,
  closer to us, and we got to see Nickel Creek drenched and
  out of their preferred lighting. The fire dies

  so we can camp elsewhere, huddle closer when
  they abandon us to rollick in the pain of
  reinvention, become Renaissance people who tune in
  over and again believing life can be a suite
  of movements. Your tousled peak is the progression
  of classical virtuosity refusing to die
  in a bowl of brainworm punch. When I look

  in the mirror to find my own retreating
  hair I profess that my young genius is
  rising to my old wisdom, like Thile’s. Baroque
  concerto scooting over for a rock ballad, commercial
  appeal losing its hold on acoustic art. Unlike
  Michael Stipe or Dave Matthews, your

  skull’s tussock blooms outward, a prodigy neither
  puttering or settling. Who better to inherit
  the above-average workshop of all-
  American variety acts, looking as if you stepped
  out of our time and into a music lesson,
  nodding to bluegrass and Green Day in a
  unified medley, having lived it all and retained

  that wunderkind spirit, saluting those who’ve tried to
  harmonize with your optimism effervescently
  paddling down the stream, bowing with a smirk
  even as you’re heckled softly off the stage.

♪♫ ♪♪♫ ♪♫♬ ♪♫♪

Caleb Coy is a freelance writer with a Masters in English from Virginia Tech. His work has appeared in several journals, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is the author of the 2015 novel, An Authentic Derivative.