
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