Welcome to the Woodshop

 

Welcome to the Woodshop

Young Kai at the age
when muscles grow quicker than caution
after his worst fuckup ever
shall spend a day in his father’s woodshop
and they shall build an urn for Kai’s future ashes
because dad thinks it’s time
for Kai to think ahead

First step, Kai, is to choose the tree
whose life ended to enclose
your dusty shadow

There’s pine sweet as sugar, eagerly shaped,
easily injured by careless blow

There’s oak so hard your enemies can’t nail
but so resistant your teachers can’t bend

There’s acacia like a pretty dancer
with freckles dancing in curls of grain,
fickle to the chisel

There’s walnut so dark
you want to touch and stroke,
disrespected by fools who seek the blond

There’s redwood the pacifist
bending to gales, outliving fire,
outlasting dinosaurs, thriving in fog

Or there’s bird’s-eye maple
staring back at the life
you’ve sanded and shaped

From seeds to sawdust
what shape your grain, Kai?
What color your soul?

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen

The Museum of Transport

 

The Museum of Transport

Where is the red canoe?
    —Lashed to the roof of the van.

And the van?
    —Overheats. Stalls in Sacramento,
    so kids and I explore a paddlewheel
    riverboat converted to hotel.
 
Kids like it?
    —Meet a man shaky on a cane
    shows us what used to be the engine
    room. Says it was stinky and scorching.
    (“Like our van!” kids say.)
    Now it’s a wine bar.

So the van starts?
    —Not yet so we walk to the
    Railroad Museum. Step into a
    Pullman sleeper car, feel it rocking.
    As a child I rode one like this.
    It rocked.

Then the van starts?
    —Runs, stalls in Placerville.
    Kids and I push it to a shady spot.

What do the kids say?
    —They’re used to it.

Do you get there?
    —Yep. Finnon Lake.

And the red canoe?
    —Patiently waits. Never breaks.
    We untie, bring her down.

Worth it?
    —Sometimes, driving freeways,
    the brain overheats. Here, the antidote.
    We paddle, we glide. Lunar light
    splits the water, smooth as syrup.

Do you camp?
    —Frogs peep. Campfire murmurs:
        —It’s a long road to the moon
        but someday you may travel there.

And the red canoe?
     —May she never be history,
    never museum.

…..

First published in Sheila-Na-Gig. Thank you editor Hayley Haugen.
Painting by Janet Katherine MacKay.

Gift

 

Gift

In my head
I hold a mental map
of all the pipes beneath these streets
because I laid them there;

and in my fingers, spark
of all the wires
on those poles
because I strung them there;

and in my muscle,
lift of lumber — stud, joist, rafter
ever after because
I nailed them there.

Child, I built your bone,
your vessel, your nerve.
Now dance, now play.
Now taste your father’s kiss.

…..

First published in Visitant —thank you editor Andrea Janda
Photos from Pixabay

Lion Dreams

 

Lion Dreams

Harvey lurches, never walks.
His body is a puppet strung loose.
Can’t hit a baseball to save his life.
Roger the bully calls him Special Spaz.

I like Harvey, like his questions
that teachers won’t answer.
Questions like “If a lion eats you,
do you enter the lion’s soul? And then
when the lion dreams, do you dream?”

Next time Roger calls him Special Spaz,
Harvey says “We’re each special in our
own weird way. You’re special, too.”
“You calling me weird? Huh? You—”
That’s when I get grade-school famous
for kicking Roger in the nuts. Which
makes me special in that weird way.

A few decades pass to now,
this grassy park overlooking the Pacific
a continent’s width from Atlantic grade school.
I’m sitting on a black metal bench
eating a KFC drumstick. A man
beside me with short white beard,
white hair in a ponytail, tosses popcorn to
strutting doves and says “If you eat chicken,
do you swallow chicken soul?”

I gape, we laugh, we marvel at the meeting,
shake hands. His arm jerks at the elbow,
loose-jointed. Grip firm.
He says “I teach Theology at Long Beach.”
I say “I fix houses. Rehab and restore.”
“You remove the rot. Funny,” he says, “how
we are what we are before we ever know.
All of us, from conception, we are
swallowed by lions.”

…..

First published in Red Wolf Journal—thank you Irene Toh, editor
Photo by “mystery cat” on Unsplash