Lumber and lacquer
Nails and elbow grease
Blood from the splinters
Before you were stripped down
From the wood
Of the forest behind our home

Standing sturdy and steadfast,
On the patio
I laid
Brick by brick
Gate keeper of the orchard that grows,
Thick in the summer  
And curls up barren,

In the cold months
As if sitting on its mahogany shoulders there are
Mountains to the North West that seem
To smile with their peaks,
And valleys against the blue satin
Sheet of a sky

You who bare witness to my body and the bodies of
Countless others
Those that would just simply use you and fewer,
That would become your very grain
You are watching our conversations,
Through knots for eyes
Through bird-burrowed holes,
Hearing us,
As we break bread as brothers
Wood through the trees
Flesh from bone
Feast to famine
You are,

Beautiful and complete
As the steak,
Cooked rare
A glass of summer port–wine:

The color of the red russet potato,
And the earth-soiled hands that dug them up