Tug Dumbly - Woodwork

Woodwork

Your end came smooth  

as a shaving planed

in a tressing arc.

Only later did you rattle the latch

to coat-hanger

a question mark:

splayed and deep

as cold crow’s feet

run the tapering lines
of our own resolve

the haywire spires

of heathen hopes dashed

weave the wind  

like drunken ghosts,

or quietly folded

and put away

still tug at the sheets

to lie with their hosts. 

Frailed intention knocks,  

papery knuckles

at a lacquered box.

Hands that loved Cedar

to varnished beauty

now gnarled to the bed

in a nursing home.

Between metal rails,

tilted and frail,

did you know this

to be the finishing room?

The nurse’s clinical

click-clack spoke plain:

there’s no pretending.

you and I both know

this is the ending.

But you must have sized 

the rough outline,

if not crafted the thing exact.

You smiled, though couldn’t speak -

the stroke had seen to that.

Yet stroked the dogs

my mother took to visit,

dumb animals

you once fed scraps.