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SHARK REEF
A Publication of the Lopez Writers
Guild
Vol. 4, No. 1
March 2004
Poetry
by John Sangster
SPLITTING SHAKESEach day I pass the barn we built,
twenty-five years back,
my friend and I he the craftsman,
the one who knew, who taught the city boy
to work with axe and adze.
I remember a hot summer afternoon
when we'd nailed the last cap shake,
how we scrambled down the ladder,
tore off our clothes and ran for the pond
a baptism, a celebration.But it is fall as I write and remember,
the season I worked alone,
splitting shakes in the slanting sunlight,
the island silent except for the thok
of the wooden maul
against the froe's steel blade,
a flicker's call, kle-yeer,
at the edge of the woods.
I remember the rhythm of the work,
the cedar's perfume as the steel cleaved
the soft grain, the wood complaining
as I tilted the blade away from me,
the shake springing from the bolt Pling!
my hands, arms, body doing the work,
my mind free to go where it would:
Could we live this country life?
Leave that other life behind?It is fall as I write and remember,
the days compressing, last vestiges
of summer warmth giving way.
Each day I pass the barn, its roof
dark with age and lichens.
WE LIVE IN UNFINISHED HOUSES
Each day we wade into life.
We have plans, of course!
Things we'll get to,
get back to.Someday we'll gather it all,
enfold it in our arms
like laundry, fresh and warm
from the dryer.But a sock gets loose,
a pair of silk panties . . .
Behind us on the hallway floor,
what we had in mind.
Copyright © 2004 by John Sangster
John Sangster has published personal essays and poems in several publications. Recently he has been writing prose poems, a form he is drawn to for its freedom and flexibility, and because it is a form that "defies definition." He is a winner of the 2002 Jack Straw Award.
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© 2003 Lopez Writers Guild
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Leta Currie Marshall