Inner Life
By Jan Wiezorek

 

Inside a notebook of lung pulp,
father diagrams, with a wood pencil,
how bronchi might branch—
like trees breathing on a wood
plant stand—healing a bentwood
chair—or, balancing and tilting,
as a limb, an artist’s easel—he closes
the notebook, with no discovery
of what he might do with horizontal
scraps hanging above a basement
workbench—where so much of the feel
of wood goes into polishing and forgetting
its inner life—how it hides a crotch,
exposes a hole, offers a ring—I believe
a tree’s exterior rasp grows from inside
and fights on out, where it rubs skin,
peeling it against bark, how we battle
the negative natures we face—years later,
mother told me father had made for me
a worktable, and with his gift came a note
of assembly, inside, in his own hand,
describing how to place the top, legs,
lip, fasteners—his own notebook page
that still tears away at my insides.

 

Stand of Pines

 

I am naked here; in the air,
taking a morning shower—
around bamboo panels
open to the sky—honored
to stand bare among white pines
in northern Michigan—I look
up at the trees in me—how I am
created with height, girth,
sap, a shaggy beard, shavings
that touch the undercroft like moss
for owls’ nests—warm water
in cool woods—I stand with trees
in day—and at night, my unease
borders pine tops, my swaying
rustles spirit-canopies dropping
bark, needles, cones, as mystery
muffles ground and air in flight
patterns of a medivac helicopter
spinning, with light, sound,
and alarm rushing into my
body and soul, as I am
sawed, hugged, and lifted
from my stand of pines.

 

Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan, US. His debut poetry chapbook, Forests of Woundedness, is forthcoming this fall from Seven Kitchens Press. Wiezorek’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, Lucky Jefferson, The Broadkill Review, LEON Literary Review, and elsewhere. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and authored the teachers’ ebook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). Wiezorek’s poetry has been awarded by the Poetry Society of Michigan.