Curly Heart Pine
I grew a diameter inch every thirty years
one hundred twelve feet tall
with a cat-face cut on my flank
where I’d been tapped for turpentine.
Solid for beams or a mast
I was ax-cut, 1896, hauled
by horse to the Suwannee,
fastened with forged iron pins,
rafted towards the mill through water
tinged orange by oak tannin.
Fate jostled me free
and I sank in an elbow of swamp.
A century fluttered the river,
80 million long leaf acres fell
while those first logger’s bones
bought a fast nothing
on the worm exchange.
Current scoured off bark, sapwood.
I was resin-hard.
Free of human purpose, I slept
until a diver with insulated hands
hauled me to his barge.
He sold me to a carpenter who stroked my knots
and sang as he fed me
to a circle of eight-gauge steel.
The whorls of history in a rare plank, recherche,
underfoot, silent, at the stylish soiree.