Old Cedar - April 23 2021

 

Old Cedar

April 23 2021

 

The home renovation guys

have their tape measures out

and are circling the house

with long sure-footed strides,

chatting, laughing, cracking jokes.

 

I wish, like them, I also worked with my hands.

 

Could justify a big rugged pick-up

that's hard on gas.

 

Could head off each day

in well-weathered jeans

and kick-ass boots,

leather as soft and supple

as the well-worked pocket

of a treasured baseball glove.

 

Could strap on a tool belt

as if I were holstering-up,

sagging

from the hammer

where the gun should hang.

And with all the specialized tools

that proclaim I'm a working man

who has mastered his craft.

 

Could sport practical shades

and a shabby ball cap,

well-worn

from sun and rain

and labour’s honest sweat.

 

The old cedar siding

will be replaced

by some low maintenance material

made in a factory somewhere.

The beautifully aged wood

with its well-weathered patina

and expert tongue and groove

will be sacrificed

for practicality.

 

If only it were so easy

to do the same,

reinventing myself

from the outside in,

presenting a new face to the world.

 

And while I may be old cedar

    —  prized for durability

      and being easy to work,

      yet also soft and sensitive  —

life is long

and wood is not.

The sun has been hard

in the exposed spots,

and even though I've aged

gracefully enough,

I could use a coat of paint

a little sprucing-up.

 

So while the building will look like new

I will be a few months older.

But not any handier

and still not as casually dressed.

Because reinvention is hard.

And the passage of time 

steady and relentless.

 

I'm planning some exterior finishing to this old house. Necessary work that has been neglected too long. It began with a simple bit of maintenance:  cleaning out the clogged gutters. Which is when a close look revealed everything else that needed doing.

I woke up today to a couple of big pick-ups parked in the driveway and a couple of guys doing exactly what the poem says. The bones of the building will be left: the foundation; the joists and framing. So it is, in a way, cosmetic. But in the way that inanimate objects can be reinvented – a little sprucing up from the outside in – we cannot. (Short of incurable vanity and plastic surgery, that is!) I have aged along with the house. If only personal reinvention were also as simple as a coat of paint!

I'm not at all handy. I hire people when anything needs to be done. But I sure would like to sport that tool belt. Sport it legitimately, not for show. And I know how satisfying it is to work with your hands; to have a task with a definite beginning and end; and to finally be able to stand back and admire a tangible quantifiable thing.

Writing a poem is a little like that. There is something to show for it in the end – a kind of object, even if it's one you can contain on a screen or in your head. And it is as much about craft as art. And I do use my hands – on the keyboard, if that counts. Still, writing a poem is hardly the same as measuring and cutting and then hammering nails into a 2 x 4!