You have to pick up The Bass,
as Mingus called his, with audible capitals,
and think of the slow years
the wood spent as a tree,
which might well have been enough for wood,
and think of the skill the bassmaker
carried without great thought of it
from home to the shop and back for decades,
and know what bassists before you have played,
and know how much of this is stored in The Bass
like energy in a spring
and know how much you must coax out.
How easy it would be, instead,
to pull a sword from a stone.
But what's inside the bass wants out.