Gifts

“Sawmill” by Claude Croney

 

birch and beech
gave their flesh
to the sawyer
whose water-wheel
mill cut rough
medium craftsmen
composed with
a vision refined
by fine finishing
hands into objects
that pleased
antiquarians
timeless wood
legacies bearing
warm smooth grained
affections of ancestry

(originally posted in November 2013)

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

Marquetry

“Self-Portrait in Marquetry” by Rob Milam

memory bones

grainy wood

graphic elements

uniquely shaped

subtly shaded

fit neatly

to the purpose

of portrait

a picture of life

told with pieces

of moments

small fragments

unforgotten of time

made to last

to outlive

the experiences

from which each

was so carefully

artfully cut

to memorialize

and perhaps add

a lustrous cachet

to an otherwise

dully prosaic

existence

Birdhousing

“Country Birdhouses” by Martha Kisling

 

 

simple pine planks

sawn and fitted with

amateur joinery

finished in primary colors

slapdash garage homemade workbench technique

they hang high round my forest enclosure

crude rustic designs for my

unfussy visiting friends

those hard-weather creatures

who sing to me

words that I’m learning to translate

with help of a feisty old jay

knows the neighborhood

been here forever

has landed each limb-tip

escaped every squirrel and hawk

many hundred times over

a true kindred spirit

who never once judged

my unskilled outdoorsmanship

never made fun of my

concrete and asphalted roots

it’s him who decides

which bird gets what house

for nobody

not even me

would dare argue the point

 

Rustic Estate

Photo from
hochstetlerloghomes.com

ponderosa pine logs
set mortise to tenon
organic esthetics
hewn craftsmanship
old as the bible
sweet domicile
trussed for a legacy span
bearing high pride of shelter
for countless descendants
generations of households
embraced by a warm
earthen finger-laid chinking
each lifetime absorbed
into honey grained wood
adding layers of life
a progressive patina
of purpose and promise
of laughter and love
fieldstone fireplace
gatherings find
conversation and argument
personal narratives
graceful and awkward
by turn sweep the hearth
with their histories
bundled and broomed
keeping tidy and neat
the comestible content of
iron-hung pots and potential
the foodstuff of character
timbered and toiling
to fatten the future

Woodwork

Photo from omaleyandstrong.com

I treasure wood things
artifacts coaxed to new forms
flesh of the forest