NaPoWriMo April 2014

Here's a poem I finished today, having started it last Thursday. I rewrote it so extensively that it is a new poem so I'm not cheating!

Wednesday
April 16th

Wood

There was long gestation: 
broad planks stacked in an odorous yard.
Tenon joints were cut by a practised saw.
These rustic shelves, sold to me
by a faceless man in a suburban junk shop
must remember high cold skies,
a struggle towards light,
the crunch of booted feet,
creak of expanding pine-cones
and the patter of leaves and rain
on a forest floor.

Now this peasant book-case
stares across my room at shelves
claiming urban elegance,
made from particles of wood from many forests,
with a gloss veneer, birthed in loud factories,
assembled by amateurs.


Both of these book-shelves share my books:
my store of knowledge, entertainment, memories.
I hope they live together without prejudice
or snobbery, acknowledging that
all of them, in some degree, 
share a common ancestor.


© Janice Windle