Some old pictures. The one on the right is an old one, taken by my friend Ray at Gerroa in 1977, and it was the first guitar that I owned - a 12 string Eko which had a nice sound when purchased, but over the course of about 18 months became untunable. It was apparently built as a 12 string classical guitar, for nylon strings, but when I purchased it it came with steel string and I assumed that was fine. Without a truss rod, the neck both bent and rotated, so you could not even tune it to itself. You could get a reasonable sound on simple chords that never went past the first 2-3 frets AND tuned to someone else's guitar, but any bar chords or notes down the neck would be out, and putting a capo on was a disaster - a problem for me as at lot of rock/pop/folk music that I played was designed for a tenor, so changing key was essential, I'm a poor baritone at best. 

So it was relatively quickly replaced by my six string classical seen in the picture on the left, purchased in 1978, and photo taken in 1979. Mary Farrugia had one, and the first time I played to a group we were sitting around at her house and the guitar got handed round for solos and group songs. I played "500 Miles" by Peter, Paul and Mary, arpeggio picked, and liked the sound of her guitar. So when I came to get my classical I got the same brand - Di Giorgio. At the time it was a good guitar, better than a Beginner's level. It was slightly more expensive than a comparable Yamaha, but far better sounding. I also bought one for Juliet in 1980. Both sound great still. After Juliet’s death, I gave it to the 11 year old young lady who lives next door. Apparently the manufacturers in Brazil started cutting corners a few years after that and the quality was no longer there. But mine is now about 45 years on (in 2023) and still rings. A similar model sold recently in WA for about $1000, and would have cost $100-200 at the time, so it's not just my attachment to that faithful guitar. 

The image in my head that inspired the poem is similar to the one of the Di Giorgio, although that picture was taken a few years later and the guitar never lived there -it's next to the door just so I could take the picture in natural light!