How it Happened that a Carpenter Found a Piece of Wood that Wept and Laughed Like a Child

Marisa Cappetta 2013

A faint pulse beats in the heart of the tree he fells.
The keen edge of his plane wakes her from a three hundred year sleep,

wakes her from dreams of thickets,
wolves and dark cottages hidden deep in the forest.

Her darling, her carpenter, carves her hands –
a journeyman who earned his nails building fortresses for tyrants

sees her thoughts like a shadow-show and even he,
a man accustomed to ebony halls and adumbral woods,

wonders if he should stop while she is half finished.
Contradictory, ungrateful! her thoughts shout

and he fears for the child taking shape in his hands.
He continues his work long into the moonless night.

Persistence turns her bark to skin and before he can varnish her
she becomes a real girl with an oakish consciousness.