It appears even the Feral Poet had a father.

Pressure Treated

Measure twice; cut once.
In time the measuring
and cut are one, the unforgiving
blade neither right, nor left
of a penciled line, instead
erasing it, opening
the wood to final liberation
of precognitive pine scent.
A clatter of wood on wood
as gravity, that oldest of wardens,
receives the excess,
and

for a moment I stand aside
to probe the supposition
that molecules spinning from
this healing cut account
for the swoon of recognition
and remembrance.  All thought
and memory simply ions
in synaptic soup.  A clean,
believable explanation,

but unfinished.  In the smell of wood I recognize
my father’s admonitions:
start your cut with a backward pull
of the handsaw; drive the nail
at an angle; flatten nail tips to prevent splitting.
I do these things and a deck takes shape,
spilling slowly down the slope beneath the trees.
He, obstreperous and distant,
long-buried in an oak coffin;
me years past the age he died;
that healing cut
a faint, window-shaped scar
on the forearm of time;
keep your shoulder still, hammer from the elbow down.

One damn fine legacy
after all, something to serve me well.
And as it turns out, I don’t know how to do much else,
have faked my way through
the rest of it to get here, but this
I can do with some absorption,
and so it goes.

I did not know it at the time,
perhaps he did; those plain instructions
were a life ring thrown to a man
drowning years in the future.
Measure twice; cut once.
Build yourself something to float on.