Coffin
It’s an appealing project, crafting
your own coffin.
More complicated
than a Shaker bread box with a shorter
wing span than the Spruce Goose, a pine box
won’t upset the neighbors like chainsaw
sculpture or an un-ironic ark.
If the dying man is half as good
at working wood as writing an essay,
burning it will almost be a shame, those
carefree hours spent scavenging lumber,
rejuvenating whine of the joiner/planer,
heavy cream ooze of wood glue down the length
of fitted seams, firm embrace of pipe clamps.
I reread the part about hand sanding,
how smoothing out the rough edges
on your own interstellar escape pod
helps put things in perspective, his overall
tone straightforward, leavened with the right
amount of gallows humor without
shading into elegy or clumsy
analogies to Nazarene carpenters.
“I
have loved the stars too fondly
to
be fearful of the night”, from a poem
by Sarah Williams,
a good choice, I think,
for the lustrous lid, his side of it anyway.
Who knows, I might try my hand at some
bookshelves, maybe a kayak from wafer
thin strips of cedar, but it’s premature
to start work on a coffin. A poem
for my side of the lid, to get the words
just right, on the other hand, may take
the rest of my natural born life.
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