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Building Her
Wood: learning it:
felling the tree
shiver the helve, feeling the grain
resist the saw, feeling for grain
with adze and chisel, feeling the plank
refuse a plane, the voyage of sap
still live in the fiber;
joining wood:
scarfing it, rabbeting keep and sternpost,
matching a bevel, butting a joint
or driving a trunnel:
watever fastens
the grain, the grain lets in, and binds;
let wood breathe or keep wood briny,
wood will outlive generations:
working wood, a man learns how
wood works:
wood comes and goes
with weather or waves; wood gives:
come to find right grain for timbers,
keelson, stem, a man can feel
how wood remembers:
the hull will
take to sea the way the tree knew wind.

Philip Booth