A TENON SAW
It was no ordinary saw.
With that saw we'd built the world.
Go-carts and tree houses,
wooden platforms for trains
that ran on tracks of runner beans.
As a child I'd watched
the sharp toothed wand
make a cricket bat appear
from an old floor board.
And later I'd tried and failed
to use its power to turn
that same bat into a sword.
Even to learn its name
was an initiation into a world
of strange constructions.
The mortise and tenon,
the dovetail. Joints
well made then that will
still hold today.
So I knew it would be there,
stiff backed, its handle worn
smooth with good use.
Waiting
as I dig through the decades
of debris in his shed.
A fine tool can always teach its owner
he'd once said,
and now here it lay
a square jawed friend.
The rust pock marks his face
as tears scar mine,
but we greet each other
with a firm handshake,
and in that grip there
still remains, all of his magic
and his grace.

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