from tree-flesh I carved huge letter As
(solid As as hollow as the A in vast)
to support the roof that kept
the voices of this house from the sky
I served the Lord of this Manor with my hands
amongst the joists were other wooden capitals
Xs Is interlocking Zs & stretched straight
arms of Ts all fixed with wooden pegs not
one iron nail was driven through tree-flesh
with saw adze spokeshave & plane I pronounced
the grain of oak as House!
through oak I spooked this home's shapes
and illumined it with oak's golden medulla rays
because my tongue had always been a coiled oak
-shaving between my jaws
the smell of sawdust & my wife's sweat
the sound of wood slid on wood &
my wife's voice & the taste of her
soft but oak-tough mouth
these remember me in now's grain
then I looked forward most to the moment
the letter As of this house would rise
to fit snug into the sky when I
could fit snug into my wife I loved
her crinkled oak-leaf-cleft I loved
her acorns aching on my tongue
the night my oak letter As woke & walked
away with my wife the night this house
went back to the woods is as driven & twisted
in to my mind as oak-roots through earth
I am a carpenter in a tree's mouth trapped