Whittling Words... Poem by John Tansey

Whittling Words
Sitting, slumped in a chair,
On a wooden porch
Under the sun
That, moving slowly, like a brushfire
Across the hot afternoon,
Burns the underbrush, the dead leaves,
Of my depressive thoughts,
Leaving an open clearing.

With nothing done and nothing left to do!

I am absorbed by the moment
And open to each one trailing after:
Echoes of the same one sound
Come from the whittling of such words,
like a piece of wood;
Shavings, that fall to the ground

As so much crumpled pieces of paper.

It is in the shaping, the carving,
The very paring down of fat;
That the sculpture, itself, disappears
And the essence of nothing is all that remains
In the palm of my red, raw, open hands:

This gift that I, humbly, give to you!


(06/10/07)