Joe Cottonwood
Joe Cottonwood repairs homes and writes poems in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California. His latest books of poetry are Foggy Dog and Random Saints.
Welcome to the Woodshop
Young Kai at the age
when muscles grow quicker than caution
after his worst fuckup ever
shall spend a day in his father’s woodshop
and they shall build an urn for Kai’s future ashes
because dad thinks it’s time
for Kai to think ahead
First step, Kai, is to choose the tree
whose life ended to enclose
your dusty shadow
There’s pine sweet as sugar, eagerly shaped,
easily injured by careless blow
There’s oak so hard your enemies can’t nail
but so resistant your teachers can’t bend
There’s acacia like a pretty dancer
with freckles dancing in curls of grain,
fickle to the chisel
There’s walnut so dark
you want to touch and stroke,
disrespected by fools who seek the blond
There’s redwood the pacifist
bending to gales, outliving fire,
outlasting dinosaurs, thriving in fog
Or there’s bird’s-eye maple
staring back at the life
you’ve sanded and shaped
From seeds to sawdust
what shape your grain, Kai?
What color your soul?
The Museum of Transport
Where is the red canoe?
—Lashed to the roof of the van.
And the van?
—Overheats. Stalls in Sacramento, so
kids and I explore a paddlewheel riverboat
converted to hotel.
Kids like it?
—Meet a man shaky on a cane
shows us what used to be the engine room.
Says it was stinky and scorching.
(“Like our van!” kids say.)
Now it’s a wine bar.
So the van starts?
—Not yet so we walk to the Railroad Museum.
Step into a Pullman sleeper car, feel it rocking.
As a child I rode one like this. It rocked.
Then the van starts?
—Runs, stalls in Placerville.
Kids and I push it to a shady spot.
What do the kids say?
—They’re used to it.
Do you get there?
—Yep. Finnon Lake.
And the red canoe?
—Patiently waits. Never breaks.
We untie, bring her down.
Worth it?
—Sometimes, driving freeways, the brain
overheats. Here, the antidote. We paddle,
we glide. Lunar light splits the water,
smooth as syrup.
Do you camp?
—Frogs peep. Campfire murmurs:
—It’s a long road to the moon
but someday you may travel there.
And the red canoe?
—May she never be history,
never museum.
