And I mentioned this poem before about my daughter.
She had not as yet been born.
But my wife loves trees.
She loves wood.
And she takes photographs.
And she likes the soil--
very much connected with the land.
And this is called "Lathe: Shirl's Tree."
Shirl's my wife.
But the poem is really for this daughter.
"I sit at my lathe, since she loves trees,
covered with ash or maple.
Ash beautiful as this burn, my chisel
makes in her grain from large and small crevice
as a wood gouges its fibers, only a pocket of child.
This hard New England cherry is the same dry.
Linseed and turpentine on a rag make the wood--
make my lathe roll in her oiled fibers,
well-wrought pocket of child, ashen and cherry-oiled tree."