Working the Lumber Yard

That summer I cut wood for pallet makers

who nailed particle board and two-by- fours together,

smoked cigarettes, and when they stood in front of the fan,

said they don't get paid enough for this s**t,

it's so f*****g hot out there.

But one man, in his fifties,

skin burnt pink as pine, corded forearms taut

and blackened, veins big as rivers running

everywhere, worked a big job

building medical equipment crates,

each moored in the yard like an ark

before the rains began.

Inside the warehouse,

the pitch grew higher with each cut trunk,

the circular saw hot from ripping trees into pieces,

making the air scorched and gray. I stacked

boards six high, ten across, my hands covered

in dried blood, grit, and splinters. Outside,

the burnt and corded crate maker had stopped

and looked up, leaning against a stack of four-by- fours

like an old rifle, nail guns hanging from each hand.

On a forklift several feet in the air was his last crate,

twenty-feet- long, boards of fresh oak, yellow and gold,

the wood breathing and alive,

every joint a constellation of nails,

every angle flashing like stained glass.

I understood that wood keeps away water and wind,

that metal splits bone and rends muscle into threads

as easily as linen. But here, each man stopped and looked;

the silence moved between them and spoke a prayer

with words real as a falling hammer,

and the sighing of the saw as the blade spun down,

a clear and melancholy hymn, was as terrifying

as blood running inside a splintered hand,

yet as pure as salvation.