on good days
I'm a carpenter by smell...
pine sawdust through and through
in my socks and mostly empty pockets

i sniff out a table top
in a delightfully split slab of black birch
rippled and laughing its way into another incarnation

light icy snow
smells like nothing,
like the sound of the creek below
as I smooth planks
alone in the low hemlock woods

I can't say if I'm a craftsman or not
this is what I do because I enjoy it
because I'm afraid to leap elsewhere
because of ends that sometimes meet
because of the smell of winter
on the sunset drive home
John Denver riding a dusty shotgun
in my old
truck