Wood resists then, like the human heart, yields

How can wood resist the cut of sharpened steel that splits and separates the fibres deep? Cells tight-held resist and yet then as if commanded yield quick to split and riving deepens beyond my gaze chased by the chisels wedged edge.

How can the densest wood resist the cut of sharpened steel that penetrates the severed fibres so? I think I know and then, as if by my own will, I think the more and realise I cannot see the cells that grew from leafy tilth upon the forest’s dark floor.

To know the wood my life is almost spent working its strands and fibres yet now I see only the smallest part of its gained substance on the bench from which I work its grain.

 

Wood like the human heart’s unfathomed, warm, beating, deep, lovely, ugly, emotive, priceless. Perhaps before I pass much further on this road I’ll satisfy the work I do to build deeper my understanding so like life; the human heart, I will realise how fragile its beat and then perhaps I’ll realise its full worth.

 

 

 

For once it’s severed from its root by axe and saw the tree no longer thriving by its heartfelt beat yields its rising sap to wait the adze and plane with which to now regain new life.

 

 

 

 

And so I work once more my tool’s edge to find the wood from which I build by splitting, riving, shaving, planing until there stands a piece of work-man-ship, a boat, a bridge a violin a simple cupboard or a stair on which the world might tread.