Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell …
     -- W. H. Auden, Lullaby


Here is the altar: milled lodgepole pine
set upon hardware-store horses.
Here is the drawknife of nicked steel
and blistering handles we wheeled.
Here is the house on the ridge,
and the ridge above the field.

Now the curl isn’t bark
releasing its base
but time ticking through small fingers.
Here is the altar: child of our child,
children of our children.

It is the angle of jaw, eyelid,
profile of a single hair,
susceptibilities of falling for math
with driven passions
give certainty you’ve come,
kneeled, made the mortar hold fast
the hearth of the heart
though creek-run rocks shift
and stumble.

Here is the altar: thermals
of air and an off-key song,
a quivering string, a universe.

~

love how that wood curl becomes the "angle of..." then the thermals. Lynn. all very Steinbeck, and because it is, the altar isn't just where we pray, it's where we sacrifice ourselves. that gives the poem its sting.  tom

Lynn, love this poem.  Your writing is so inspirational.  Always makes me want to write.  Something to be said for that.  Also love Tom's reply about sacrifice.  We do learn to do that, if nothing else.

Wonderful job,
cheryl

Lynn, This is so much tighter than your normal voice. The cadence beats with something ancient and you carry it off with out a misstep. The subject calls for this contemplative sound and it works magnificently for this reader.

larry

Larry is right - much tighter but The connection with the 'ancient' is always there in your work - for me.

Right nice.

Tom!  thank you.  The end stanza was all together different for a few days, more solid than thermals.  I woke up to the need for a point beyond concrete matters, and thermal came to me as a way to get there.  Very pleased this works for you.

Cheryl!  thank you.  It's the poems I've been reading in the 'love poem' category at poets.org along the way, I think, inspiring this.    It's all been said in so many ways and by such finer voices. 

Larry, thank you.  I worried the line about hearth of the heart; thought it cliche; took it out; put it back; took it out; etc.  So this thanks comes with gratitude that even if cliche, not a misstep.  ;)

and Lavonne, thank you.  ;) How can I help but connect with the ancient when I am?

I really like this poem.  Was stopped, though by "wheeled."  Do you mean "wield"?  I can't see the wheeling of a drawknife.  What am I missing?

Thanks for your note, rick.  There was a circular action -- I'd sit straddled on the logs to peel them, and plant the blade in the bark then draw the blade toward me, then lift from the stroke and go out and reset the blade and pull toward me again.  Difficult to describe, but when I picture the action, each new swipe at the bark on the log took this circular movement of lift, arcing up, coming back down [of arms and tool] to achieve.  And gradually I'd scoot along the log once I'd peeled what I could reach.  In writing this and using that word, I was thinking of the wheel of a unicyle, the movement, somehow or other --- but it may not work 

Glad for the question and glad you stopped to read.

It works for me.  Having used a draw knife I thought of both meanings when I read. But I guess one needs the experience of using a draw knife to understand the two meanings. 

gotta get you and Lynn up here to do some work on my house!

ah, tom -- you would've had to have hired me before the batwings swung into view on these old arms! 

Oh, sweet Jesus! I came by here for a bit of refueling poetically.  I needed an escape from Spanish class and from the screaming cockroaches in forensic entomology. Sweet Jesus, because I intentionally saved your work for the very last- a sendoff of sorts because I always know what to expect, but I could not have imagined this poem. All I can say (and I know you won't mind) is that I am printing a copy. When I need that breath of fresh air from the madness of diptera and from conjugating verbs in the preterite, then I'll have a refuge. This is fantastic.  I really needed your voice today.

Sherry

GIRL!  I don't know about your spanish, but you sure know how to make a wordsmith's day shine!  thank you.

Was sure I'd posted my praise of this, but as is not infrequent, I probably wrote it and neglected to click on 'post'. Love it

milner

De nada. :)