Fine Grit

The air, a pale, soft cloud,

wood-sweet and thick with history.

Decades of pine and oak, bowed

under blades, a kind of liturgy

of making, unmaking.

My hands, after the sweep, the heave,

still held that ghost, that aching

fine film. I tried to believe

the tap water would wash it clean.

But it caught in the knuckles, the cuticles,

a memory, sharp and keen,

of what had been whole, now miniscule.

It clung to my hair, a second skin,

a fine, dry, persistent argument

for the beauty of what had been,

for the labor, deeply spent.