Heartwood

Is it not a second innocence,
this state of being fifty-nine,
just shy of that formidable
age of stature and attainment
if also of forgetting? Let

the chips fall, the shavings make
their mess beneath that steady blade
whose cut is deepening, whose teeth
approach a still, resistant core,
a place of origins and endings.

Copyright © 2005 Ben Howard All rights reserved
from Dark Pool
Salmon Poetry / Dufour Editions, Inc.
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission