layers

Fb moderated poetry group does not allow me to replace the image appended to my own poem?

kitchen cabinet, Feb 5, 2015, Canada

Ply poem as revised for this morning’s image is :

Water Closet Basin

René s’installe dans une cheminée;
Descartes sits in a cabinet.

There is no poem
in that peculiar procedure
of making varnished plywood
(good one side)

bathroom cabinets,
kitchen cupboards,
pantry cabinets,
linen closets.

Let the hinge pins show
— visible brass —
wood grain be a most liquid syrup
as if pine sap ever poured,
shamelessly dripping amber
into pans of caramel.

That carpenter is a “wood butcher”
my father is saying to my uncle,
his brother, my mother’s
sister’s husband …

Varnish is not enough:
poems are not millwork.
Shellac seals the pores.
Swing open those doors —

Now.
Look up,
under the sink:
nothing hinges upon it.

(paint may have dripped:
no one bothers to paint
up under the wide cheeks
of double basins)

© 2016 G. Robert Shiplett ALL RIGHTS RESERVED No Repro w/out Perm
Uncollected Poems of R. Shifflet/Chifflet, “Returned to Canada”