Houses
( for two ladies)
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There are many ways to spend an afternoon.
This is one.
Wood first: Chunks of cedar.cutoffs from fence post.
Checkered and weathered grey but when freshly cut
as smooth as skin with a fine red grain and an odor of closets,
chests and deep pine forests in the morning.
Then there is the saw: Not glittering or up to date but heavy
with the top the color of a sidewalk after rain.
And as it hums to life and I start to cut I am thinking about wrens.
They say a male wren needs two houses are are often seen
sitting on a roof singing while the females fight
sometimes, they say, to the death.
it is hard to imagine as I think back
that I would ever build anything given the way I made my life
let alone a house for birds.
And as I drill the hole that will become the door
and think of the music I will hear I know it will come to me with sadness
Because of me and for you the one I lost
and then for you, the one I simply gave away.