{"id":618,"date":"2022-10-02T12:41:20","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T19:41:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=618"},"modified":"2024-01-28T17:41:46","modified_gmt":"2024-01-29T01:41:46","slug":"edge-of-the-axe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=618","title":{"rendered":"Edge of the Axe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(<em>a postponed revision of &#8220;The Carpenter&#8221; from 1966<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>I grew in the roots all winter,<br \/>\nwine waiting to rise;<br \/>\nI mellowed in wood till you made me see<br \/>\nthe luxury of chair and table<br \/>\nset in a frozen skeleton of maple.<br \/>\nSo seeing, I cut and killed the tree.<br \/>\nYou made what you wanted<br \/>\nand we moved on.<\/p>\n<p>I swam in a rolling tide of pine.<br \/>\nAll the coniferous, brittle<br \/>\nturpentine trees<br \/>\nbreathed into me<br \/>\nspirits of ordinary needles.<br \/>\nThen you began to see<br \/>\nhow broad pine beams<br \/>\nbuild structure into dreams.<br \/>\nAgain I saw timbers<br \/>\ntoppled and trimmed,<br \/>\ntreated for use.<\/p>\n<p>Then I spoke in the oak&#8217;s rough tones,<br \/>\ngrumbling green solidity.<br \/>\nI grew tough,<br \/>\ndrew up gnarled and huge.<br \/>\nBut soon enough<br \/>\nhard floors and solid stairs<br \/>\ncalled for the oak, broken and cut.<br \/>\nYou cancelled the monument,<br \/>\nmoving on.<\/p>\n<p>Kneeling about the base<br \/>\nof a towering cypress temple<br \/>\ntended by storks and egret priests,<br \/>\nI needed to grow to know the grace,<br \/>\nthe grand patience of that place.<br \/>\nI rose to an insular spike of pride,<br \/>\nmystical spire spun with thin green,<br \/>\nwhen again at the edge of understanding<br \/>\nyou stepped away and wanted<br \/>\nweatherproof wood<br \/>\nso your structures would stand<br \/>\nwhen you moved on.<\/p>\n<p>Save me the still willows,<br \/>\nsilent, to wait on.<br \/>\nStay, let me sit a while,<br \/>\nshifting and watching,<br \/>\nsifting my will<br \/>\nslowly away.<\/p>\n<p>(<em>22 July 1975 &#8212; a good example of ruining a poem by revision?<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(a postponed revision of &#8220;The Carpenter&#8221; from 1966) I grew in the roots all winter, wine waiting to rise; I mellowed in wood till you made me see the luxury of chair and table set in a frozen skeleton of maple. So seeing, I cut and killed the tree. You<a href=\"https:\/\/jick.ca\/?p=618\" class=\"read-more\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1974-1979"],"gutentor_comment":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jick.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}