In honor of today’s third annual bloggers’ silent poetry reading, here is a poem by my very talented friend Chuck Rybak. It is drawn from his collection Tongue and Groove, which is currently available from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

"Tongue and Groove"

I

The hardwood floor, laid yesterday

and fit for sanding, waits to be smoothed,

walkable in bare feet. The worker,

machine firing, bickers on his phone

with a woman, a brutal battle drawn

through the dark and resumed this dawn.

You disrespected me, he says.

He’s kept curses in reserve, hopes to hurl them

while working — the sander drowns him out,

drowns her out, overwhelms their shouts

and he hates repeating

his rage. I can’t hear you,

he yells. Then only the sander speaks,

smoothing things over.

 

II.

Arguing and installation — tongue and groove.

The boards, pounded into place

the day before, forged a rhythm of roar

and curse and heavy-metal music.

Armed with a mallet, he wed

each word and plank with a blow:

You   stupid   crappy   wood

Why   won’t   you   fit?

Then, as if he were a member

of the band, he’d resume a verse

or melody, mid-line, banging along

with Black Sabbath. In the quiet

that followed, he mentioned his three daughters

and I imagined their daily rush from the door,

the leaps that snag their collars and sleeves

on his thorny tattoos. They swing there,

welcoming him home again.

 

III.

Then there’s the wood, reclaimed

barn wood, the pine of old farms,

marked by hoof and horn, hail and blade,

by a summer of drought, drink, and punch,

by a kicking calf and her mother stiff

with milk fever. The worker

glosses these scars as "rustic," revels

in the spacing, the random width –

no option for a uniform look,

no pick of consistency. After the seal,

the soak and shine of polyurethane,

my barefoot wife and I walk the floor

of what will be a child’s room.

We kneel and read the knots and grooves,

run our fingers with the grain, observe,

Here is the anger that marked the wood.

Here is the love that smoothed it.