Today is a why day.
It is the reason that the sun
has been greeted on so many mornings
and the reason that the stars
have gone to bed so often
before you.
It is the reason for all the miles
of good road
and poor road
and nights when eyelids
could have used (in toothpicks) the same
famework you’d built that morning
to support an exhausted frame.
Today is a day
when the sacrifices and lonely times
show their worth.
It is the dawning of a day
in your own history.
Today is why
you walked away
from things you loved before.
When you stepped into the darkness,
an unfamiliar place, away from the
roads you knew well.
You chose another path –
one with sore arms
one with thick hands
one with scrapes
and cuts
and slivers.
Today is a day
when you look like houses.
Your good bones covered
with the clean, fine lines of hard labor,
You skin darkened by sunshine
and softened by weather.
Your eyes as clear as old glass,
crafted with intention and care.
Today is a day
to remind you
of how you first fell in love.
How straight she was, how tall.
How graceful and beautiful.
How her windows rippled in the light.
How your hands felt against her smooth planks.
How she would bear the years with your care.
How you would bear the years with her memory…
How she stood stronger when you left her.
Yesterday you touched charred wood
and build around it a reliquary –
a sturdy one – big enough to hold its story.
Today, you reach out
across decades to
make the mortise
transform the tread
fix the fenestration…
Today is a why day.
Today you write your own history
in story and wood.
Today you climb and look
across the tall trees in splendor,
across the long roads,
across your own years.
And from that great height
the sound of hammer to nail
rings and rings and rings
with a music
more
beautiful
than any
cast
bell.