Valerie Nieman
The Life Inside
He would peel the bark from
wild cherry trees,
lash it into tiny canoes
that, set adrift on our creek,
might have prowed their way
as far as town, passing
under the concrete bridge
where fish shot back and forth
across sunlight, and maybe
they kept going, just going.
He made three cuts:
two to girdle, one to free
the glossy outer bark,
damp with sap
and pliable for working.
But if I kept the boats
safe in my room,
those not put to water soon
dried, pulling apart at the seams.
As for the trees, well.
*****
These days my father
sheds like a hickory. He grows by
shattering,
leaves showers of skin
wherever he sits,
scratches at the gray
lignified layer, rough, dead,
until the inner red shows
where he has year by year
exchanged life for life:
farmhand, infantryman,
metal-bender, artisan,
bartender, chaplain,
one by one completed
and put to the stream,
away, away.