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Open Poetry #29
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Old_Shoe_New_Laces
Junior Member
since 2003-06-16
Posts 31


0 posted 2003-10-20 03:28 PM


It happens this way,
cherry, oak, pine
an unpolished heart
rough, jagged
something catches
a small fractal
it enters the flesh,
into the foot, the
hand, under a nail.

You feel it in the
day, in the night,
beneath the skin
when you walk or
while you write,
with each breath,
each pulse, too deep
to remove, too irritable
to ignore.

You are a carpenter and
know your trade well, know
wood by its texture, grain,
color, by its smell.

You’ve built seventy eight
chairs, twenty seven tables,
thirty six dressers, nine
china cabinets, and such
an abundance of hand
carved figurines: cowboys,
buffalo, owls eagles,
cranes; that you have lost
track.

Your hands are dry,
the chisels dull, saws
don’t cut like they use
to.  

The house was never built.

The splinters find
the areas where calluses
have yet to form.  They
get in.  

It hurts to hold the
wood, hurts not
to hold the wood.

“It’s arthritis,” you
tell yourself, “caused
by the splinters, the wood,
and it will never go
away.”


© Copyright 2003 B.A. Stites - All Rights Reserved
Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354
Listening to every heart
1 posted 2003-10-20 04:52 PM


It hurts to hold the
wood, hurts not
to hold the wood.

~*~

For several personal reasons,
I'm keeping this one.

Thank you, B.A.

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