The Carpenter Teaches His Daughter to Breathe
Stardust. Flanked by steel blade. Bully-sawand there goes the grain. Breeze buffered
by a closed garage door. My father's hands
drowned in sawdust pushes the plank under
the teeth. Whirrrr! And I'm stoned cupid
again watching him work. No one thing tends
to the sweet smell of freshly cut wood like
I do, young girl straddling a sawhorse, as daddy
works. His hands moving as birds do, swift
and steady as his fingers take flight carving
cross-hatch with the grain. One man's blade
is another man's hunger.
Like a child I lived above the twisted cork
of death. How a toe bone's connected to a hand
bone, a hand bone's connected to an arm bone.
The sweet scent of sawdust. The sunlight filtered
through the dusty window. My father's deep
norwegian whistle ringing through the spaciousness
of tin roof, cement floor. You'd think I'd have
a consciousness for danger. No, but not even
a brushstroke of minwax could warn me.
And so, with one eye shut, my father tapped on
death's door one too many times. The woodchips
lashed like solvent in his lungs. Graceful though
they flew through the air before finding his mouth
open with laughter, open with explanation as he leaned
down, showing me a singlular artistic curve of craftmanship.
See this edge, he'd point. A touch no touch could match.
And I would nod in delight, kissing the very words he spoke.
The greater wisdom in him, covering his mouth to cough.
Poetry by Lisa Zaran
Read 1031 times
Written on 2008-09-24 at 01:43
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