Good Carpenters

I mourn a dead friend, like myself, a good carpenter. -Pablo Neruda about César Vallejo I looked at the book. 'It will stand,' I thought. Not a palace built by a newspaper czar, nor a mud hovel that the sea will soften, but a good house of words near the sea with everything plumb. That is the most I can ask. I have cut the wood myself from my own forests, I have sanded it smooth with the grain. I have left knotholes for the muse to whistle through -old siren that she is. At least the roof does not leak. & the fireplace is small but it draws. The wind whips the house but it stands. & the waves lick the pilings with their tongues but at least they do not suck me out to sea. The sea is wordless but it tries to talk to us. We carpenters are also translators. We build with sounds, with whispers & with wind. We try to speak the language of the sea. We want to build to last yet change forever. We want to be as endless as the sea. & yet she mocks us with her barnacle & rust stains; she tells us what we build will also fall. Our words are grains of sand, our walls are wood, our windowpanes are sprayed with solemn salt. We whisper, as we build, 'Forever please,' -by which we mean at least for thirty years.