Skip to main content Help Control Panel

Shakespeare's Monkeys

Infinite Monkeys. Infinite Typewriters.

May 16, 2025  

More in The Personal Space of U668857

The Pine Stool

 

The double take of seeing it again:
an old pine stool -
school-day woodwork
out-lasting the classroom -

its curve and concave symmetry;
the hard varnish on planed plank;
that knot in veiny grains
and a subtle warp in one leg

which snapped in mid-split
when Parkhill over-tightened the clamp.
But he was seasoned like the wood,

accustomed to wrong cuts,
the disjoint of butts and dovetails,
so he persevered with glue,

hair-lining the fracture
which I sandpapered over
when the time was right.

I can hear his barking admonition
across the room if a plane
was left blade-down on the bench -

but here's his legacy of coping-saw,
and Mortis-and-Tenon joint
secured with decorative peg.

A smoothing of angled time,
a mend in some broken continuum
going back through other rooms,

back through other buildings,
back to Parkhill's storeroom,
to lengths of unformed lumber;

back to the broad-toothed saw-wheel
and the wholesale hoardings of timber-yard;
back to a tree-trunk’s uprooted source;

back before the chain-saw's bite;
back to the forest's high sway
and the bark-scratch of squirrel and woodpecker;

receding through yearly growth rings
to tender stems of sapling and seedling;
and further back to a fir cone's fall.

Comments

Shan - on Apr. 25 2008

excellent visuals here, I can even see the scowl on Parkhill's face.

 

I made a shelf, which sadly not even glue could salvage.

 

----- Life is what happens while you wait for great things.



Life is what happens while you wait for great things.
U668857 - on Apr. 25 2008
Many thanks for review, Shan. I was shocked to see that old stool after all these years - took me right back. (thought it got binned ages ago  - but it ended up in my sister's house unbeknownst to me). Shame about your shelf - my woodworking days are well gone - I'll stick with buying furniture these days rather than making it...BRgds.,Alan.
Share
* Invite participants
* Share at Facebook
* Share at Twitter
* Share at LinkedIn
* Reference this page
Monitor
Recent files
Member Pages »
See also