My first thoughts of them aren’t with the craft
but with the atmosphere, with starting work:
the optimism of the summer sun,
the early morning light before the task
of measuring and marking off begins …
and then the redolence of sawing wood,
the scent of cherry, poplar, bitter walnut,
and further back, to childhood’s fragrant pine,
its essence like a kindness in the room.

Dimensioned patiently to given plans,
sorted neatly on the shelves, in stacks,
the pieces lent their geometric shapes
to suffer tenons, mortises and tongues
to transform, via joinery, a plank
into a thing of beauty made for use.

The discipline, from planes to polishing,
endures through stacks of glossy magazines,
their use no longer relevant to what
a man my age should trust his fingers to.
The drive to make from wood what eyes and mind
contrive has, like the games of childhood, found
its place among the passions of my past.
I keep the magazines in order, where
(unless a silly urge to recall how
to make the tombstone-panels for a door
implores a late-life structural revival)
they’ll sit, still faithful to their month and year,
until the need to shrink our life down further
finesses pleasant decades of instruction.
The truth is, I don’t read them anymore,
but when they’re gone, I know I’ll miss them all.