Richard Kenney(b. 1948)
Sawmill
Snap tempered tooth chips
sawyer shouts steel in sawlog
lock engine off slack
line carriage back echo
like a gunshot ricochets
off galvanized tin roof the great
blade ringing like a gong
and every man down low:
look, along the log's sheer face,
the bright metal shows itself:
a tap, a nail, a bit of buried
wire, some wrong coordinate
or undetected intercept
exactly there—count the rings—
just forty years ago.
RBYN SARAH
b. 1949