Sawmill Poem by Richard Kenney

Snap tempered tooth chips

sawyer shouts steel in sawlog

lock engine off slack

line carriage back echo

like a gunshot ricochets

off galvanized tin roof the great

blade ringing like a gong

and every man down low:

look, along the log's sheer face,

the bright metal shows itself:

a tap, a nail, a bit of buried

wire, some wrong coordinate

or undetected intercept

exactly there — count the rings —

just forty years ago.