Elegy with Table Saw & Cobwebs
Rummaging the wood-rack
I pull a cracked
old shingle off the stack
a scrap
on which at
some point, with his flat
knife-whittled pencil
my old friend Ollie scratched
5/32 + 1/2 —
a kind of riddle now, a workman's
artifact,
unnoticed since that
year the cancer cells attacked –
since whatever it
once meant,
whatever part it
played in some project,
went with him
into the flames
& ash.
Friends
we die like that:
thew hole starry sky goes black
while these little
nothings last —
while these spiders in the rafters
go clutching
their white sacks
whispering & yet & yet
& yet & yet
until I dust the fading rune
& put it back.
______________________
Patrick Phillips
Song of the Closing Doors
Knopf 2022
