Whittlings

Rustic Chess Pieces by Jim Arnold

sturdy history
decades of callus
domestic of toil
humid stains
from the hearth

willow broomstick
medium rustic
reluctantly
giving itself to
homely conversion

repurposed by
mind of a hand
small with blades
sharply turned to
the cut and the carve

slender totem
in yield of two
sixteen-piece segments
crude chessmen
uniquely envisioned

a primitive art
seizing function
and form with an
ingenious dream by
a boy with a knife

More’s the Pity

“Night” by Justyna Kopania

edge of light

slashes time

a remorseless

soft blade

dripping days

upon stones

of my past

bleeding life

from the sky

letting darkness

invade and

seep into

the wound

with no hope

of a healing

no soothing

dull scars to

give finish to

pain of this

ultimate night

all my dawns

have been used

more’s the pity

so many

were wasted

Bowie’s Knife

Photo from mileswelze.com

smithed in a fiery
frontiersman forge
honed to bear-skinning edge
along broadblade duality
Arkansas toothpick
point drawn deadly sharp
turned trailblazer tool
to wicked formidable
wilderness weapon

slashed violent legend
across savage lands
cut to even the odds
in that sandbar fight
under Vidalia
dispatched three assassins
back home amid stirred
rise of armed revolution
by bold restive Texans
then died a proud
iron willed death
clutched defiantly
inside the Alamo walls

but its scions survived
in tooled leather sheaths
strapped on hard living legs
of the hard dying soldiers
of fortune and fortitude
carving the routes
of a bloodlust expansion
that chased Spanish rule
from unstoppable destiny