A bathroom stripped down
to studs. Tufts of blackened fiberglass
caught on rusted heads of nails.
Gypsum chalk-streaks
that cross and mark a plywood floor.
The burning teeth of a hole saw
eat sheathing toward the street
until a cut punches through, daylight
enters, and a scene is framed:
a sparrow dances in a saucer of ice,
a car appears like a thought,
wends down a hill, and is gone
beyond a rush of cold.
Listen to the gutter's metallic snap
with each beat of roof melt.
Here, a twisting wrist. The wall,
a stockade. A corona of light surrounds
a reaching arm.
Smelling the saw dust, fresh-cut pine,
swells an old music inside, each measure
played by someone else,
each string of notes
a string of matter that mattered
that vibrates in the dust
and chest
when the hammer sings
when the blade reciprocates
when the wind shakes
leafless boughs of trees
that bow each other
like the fiddler who lived upstairs
blurring horsehair across catgut
moving an old man to weep
until a quiet
in which it seems—
through this unfinished tunnel
I pull my hand from—
a sparrow bows, sipping from a puddle.
