splitting
Work the plane he taught me across the length
like the mower across the land
Keep a constant line, a rhythm
like the placement of tied flies on water
Stay the grain & the depth, run the blade
like steel wheels in the shallow valley of the rails
Hone the wood: make it splitless
These are not his words but a version remembered
& this, awkward in his place, is me in my middle years
old, as he was then to me, to the next generation
in the eyes of the boy I see him in beside me
The instrument strumphs across the wood
slicks the length of the handle taking shape
Slick. Slick. The music of thinning
& I wonder about the word 'plane'
see the wood-curls slipping through the slit
as wings, as tokens for the would-be train ride home
across the prairies of my youth, as wooden down
collected by my son, handfuls
to be stuffed in a sack, to be slept upon
Imagine a mattress of wood
We slide the axe head on the new handle, wedge it there
snug The tool is heavy in his hands, so heavy
The air is frozen, the wood winter hard
the kind of cold that makes splitting clean, quick
Aim for the centre I tell him Hold tight
Line the blade with the grain
He looks up at me: the eyes of the boy
the man becoming
Re: moving
Just like typing he tells me
except there's sound instead of words
keys without the letters on
The spaces spell 'face'
the lines, 'Every good boy deserves ---'
A father, me, awkward in my middle years, slumped
on a bench beside the boy I'll rarely see anymore
Like my own, his childhood in moments remembered:
scenes scribbled down, notes collected, a verse
The tutor, he takes my finger like a tool in his fist
galumphs it across the keys, looks at me
The instrument is wooden in my hands, musicless
the last of the heavy things to go
The movers need room she tells me, his mother
Stand clear an echo of my father's instruction
when a tree was about to fall Timbre I say
& the pun is lost, missed, unwritten on the air
She does not even look, wants a quick clean split,
aims for it
Awkward, unable to see, really, I carry the boxspring,
make my way through by feel, remember the sleepless
perfection of our not so long ago love
wedged into the disappearing space of a stuffed in
packed up home & I almost can't feel the sliver
going in, the fleck of wood in my finger I point to
with the opened blade of my father's pocketknife
the going away keep your chin up see you soon gift
he gave me years ago at the time of our own departing
I show my son, the way I was shown, how to flick away
the top layer, the dead part, without drawing blood
how to pinch the sliver out, the tiny aching tunnel left behind
the feeling like something has always been there & should still be
losing
Cross the river someone murmurs & I can't tell who or why
awkward in my suit, muted by the plain wooden box he lies in
Directions away from here, perhaps, from someone I don't recognize
who knows me, says I look thin, slick, which means 'from the city' here
The warning I heard as a boy with Don't at the front, alone at the end
The place he lived where I used to where he lost his footing on the rocks
in the rolling river water he knew & stood within his whole life, tying a fly
I imagine, eying a hole, thinking of the silver flashing life below the surface
the weight, the anticipation, so sure, so skilled, the lesson of loss never had
& the instrument of catching, musical in his hands
I help carry him, the strange steel handle like a rail, think of releasing
all the things he's no longer bearing: heavier than I expected
It's been so long
The train cuts across the land, moves with it: home
Someone hums & there's a song I wish I could remember
Through the window I relearn the prairies, lose them again
They seem so much softer now everything does even the ache
