'Five String Eddie' Poem by Roy Davenport

I met Eddie on a cold, wet December morning in 2005.
He was sitting on a bench in a public park feeding the birds.
Lying beside him was an old beat-up Gibson guitar.
It was hard to tell who looked more worn, Eddie or the guitar.

He was tall and lanky and wore dirty, shabby clothes
that looked a size too big for his slender frame.
His face was weathered and tanned from daily exposure to the elements.
His boots were well beyond keeping out rain or cold
and when he crossed his leg I could see cardboard
where leather should have been.

When Eddie saw me sitting nearby he picked up his guitar
and asked me if I had a request he could play.
That’s when I noticed the guitar only had five strings
He was missing the small “E” string.
I asked him how he could play with only five strings.
He said he had gotten so use to playing five he probably wouldn’t
know what to do with that sixth string…then he laughed a toothless laugh.
Besides he said, I’m partial to my nickname….”Five String Eddie”.


I told him I had no particular request in mind so he began to play.
It took me a second to recognize the song. It was “ Amazing Grace”.
Five String Eddie would never win on “America’s Got Talent”
But I had never heard anyone sing and play with so much soul.
There was pain and loneliness and sadness in his voice
and the old guitar mirrored those same feelings in its’ strings.

When he was through I tipped him a couple of dollars and left.
Over the next couple of weeks he became my lunchtime entertainment.
Each time he asked if I had a request, each time I let him choose.
He knew a lot of country songs but he loved old gospel tunes.

Out of curiosity one day I asked if he was a religious man.
He pulled a small New Testament out of his pocket, then held up two
fingers together. “Me and the Lord’s just like this.
I’m his favorite guitar player he said, then he laughed.”

It was hard to tell Eddie’s age, his hard life showed on his face.
On one occasion he told me that he left home when he was 14.
His address was a cardboard box in a grove of trees near the park.
He had lived on the street most of his life….getting by on tips
and the kindness of strangers who were moved by his music
or just tipped him out of annoyance. Either way they got a song.


In early January I left my office expecting to eat my lunch and
listen to Five String Eddie play. I always felt better after listening to him. But no Eddie showed that day.
In fact he didn’t show all of that week nor the next.
It had been a brutally cold week and I was worried how Eddie
would manage the near zero night time temperatures.

I checked with some folks in the courthouse
which stood directly across the street from his daily venue but
no one knew anything about him other than his name…Five String Eddie.
The next day was a cold, rainy day but I decided to extend my lunch
to check with a friend of mine who worked in the Police Department.


“Yes”, He knew about Five String Eddie he said, then sighed deeply,
“They found his frozen body last week in some trees over by the park.”
Eddie had no family they knew of so he was buried in a pauper’s grave
on the outskirts of town. There was no headstone to mark his grave but the overgrown cemetery led me to believe that nobody visited there much anyway.
My mood matched the weather as I turned to leave.


There is a scene from the old Andy Griffith show where Opie has to raise
some baby birds because he killed the mother bird with his air rifle.
When he finally, reluctantly had to release the birds. He commented to his Pa
that the cage sure looked empty. But Andy, with his down-home wisdom,
says, “yes but aren’t the trees nice and full.”

There’s no Five String Eddie in the park anymore
and though the park seems emptier now, I imagine somewhere
In heaven the Angelic music sounds particularly sweet
even accompanied by an old five string guitar.