Looking At Wood

Another carpenter poem

I fell in love with wood early in life. When I was a boy it felt like the most important thing in the world.

                        Looking at Wood

                 Blocks were my first love,
                     freed from their box,
                     stacked and toppled
                       and stacked again.
                  The grain went this way
                    under a muffled coat
                    of red and blue paint.
           I climbed inside their plain box,
                    the grain made faces,
                  the knots winked at me
         and the pine smelled like heaven.

                    Later, in the woods,
                 small forked branches
                    became slingshots.
              All sticks became spears,
                  javelins and daggers,
                    swords and arrows.
                  Everything else went
                      into our tree fort,
              defended with a last gasp
              against the savage horde.

          Then the love affair took root.
        I learned the trade of carpentry.
              We held hands each day;
             it was all splinters and sap.
        Her pine perfume never cloying
                        for a moment.

                     I saw the sun rise
             on a deck of fresh lumber,
    slumbering under a thick coat of ice.
                    The sun soared
             beyond the clean rafters,
      beyond the ribs of a mackerel sky.
         At dusk, the new siding shone,
                       on the flanks
              of a great, gilded beast.

                      I built the new,
         made additions to the young
              and renovated the old.
     I repaired worn dental crown trim
       and sagging eyebrow windows.
             I propped fallen arches,
                and failing roof hips.
      I have sent old studs to pasture.

                   I’m not done yet
              but I can see the end
                    in the distance.
           Just before quitting time
     I will work my last piece of wood.
                  I will climb inside,
               a dagger in my hand.
                The faces will smile,
                 the knots will wink,
                      and the pine
               will smell like Heaven.

                            2008

Wrote this upon returning from a walk with our pooch, Duff. Couldn’t have written it without him- biggest hearted dog I ever knew. I threw a lot of sticks which he would lose from time to time. I would say with all the vaudeville exasperation I could muster, "What happened to that stick? Do you think those things just grow on trees?" We’d laugh at that one every time.