Lumbering Home

Hymn-along a song of
homegrown timber,
harvested within sight
of the renewed icehouse.

Hum, drum, and strum
an anthem hailing
hyper local lumber
loved, labored, arrayed.

Felled and milled on site,
then stickered and stacked,
courses upon courses,
a dozen years cured,

between hemlock floor,
and fir paneled walls,
ceiling stained from five
quarter centuries.

Once towering ash,
elm, and poplar trees
reborn as flooring,
balusters, newels, railings.

Canopied colossi
metamorphosed into
stair treads and risers,
door and window trim.

Come and chant with me,
a poetics of planing —
unroughing, smoothing
truing, straightening —

for patient makers
alchemizing plants in-
to ingredients in-
to functional art.

Come and coalesce
a creation chorus
of re-creation,
tree transformation,

and stump to stairway
reincarnation…
an historic icehouse
rehabilitation.