Making a Rabbet Plane in the Machine Shop on the Hill
BY MATTHEW NIENOW
I fish for angle iron in the scrap,
slag clotted along the seams
of all but one piece clean enough
to make it worth the work ahead.
I lock it in the vice, jaws closed
down with the rubber mallet’s
prodding, and the grinder whines on
in my hands, works the rusted
metal to a sheen, swirling Q’s
left in wake until I take the piece
to the belt and let the rough tongue
lick it smooth. The whole
room smells hot, it
smells of origin, of soot, and
the band saw screeches as the blade
sinks through. The shape
I want is marked on the metal
and what I can’t take out quickly
and with power must be worked
by hand. A rat-tail file finds
the mouth of the almost-plane
and works a bevel smooth. The blade
is an old file I’ve ground the teeth
off of. I give it an edge
and it stays. It gives me an edge,
the smell of the metal shop,
a cutting bitter scent that belongs
inside the earth. I turn
the idea of the tool over in my hands.
That it works makes me want to work.
The work, it carves that want away.
I Have No Empire
BY MATTHEW NIENOW
to offer you,
my son, only the song
a fool travels with, on the back
of the wrong thought.
Forego the knife
in the pocket for a stone.
The only protection
from the inevitable
is patience. What better
teacher than stone?
Carry the weight well
and you’ll hardly notice
how much the road
agrees with each step.
Son, the world erupts
and so grows.
When it cools,
and trust me, it does,
the crust is a tomb to the living,
though the dead call it womb.
In the Boatyard
BY MATTHEW NIENOW
i.
there lives a weather vane cooper salt green
pitched roof above the racking hull
rafters & scaffolding dirt floor under floor
of every shaving yet made from the work
ii.
the men oiled worked to a sheen in their heavy clothes
tattered as the wind as the wind worked
over the dusty yard and who
was there to claim such derelict caskets propped upon
iii.
jack stands stripped and abandoned
with every kind of name for hope or luck or pleasure
lettered darkly on each transom
