I’m in a row of sunflowers, looking up
at the cutaway sky. Then walking a talc-dust path
between beds of pansies, their piebald faces turned toward me.
To the left a swaybacked shed, iron-hinged.
Burl’s tool chest within, leather straps, neat trays stacked.
When he died, Burl left his tools to my father:
awls, hacksaws, wrenches, planes. Their oiled wood
the dark sheen of another century’s craft.
As a child, I would lay out the tools, one by one,
their work coiled deep within them. Would skim
the planes across a woodblock, breathe the green curls.
This was my introduction to history,
its implements refusing to age.
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POETRY: Issue 35