Of George I write

His hands were as big as he was tall

“Plates of meat!” the other men called ‘em.

 They swallowed the plane handle inside those mits

and I defied any grain or knot to answer back

when he swiped it along the length and breadth of an

ugly board of wood, be it oak, walnut, cherry or ash.

His name was George, a man of presence, of presence

and you might fear his very presence until he then

smiled and pulled you unwittingly into

his world of making.

I say pulled because most men have no such power as he,

a command by presence, by working, by word

and by skill.

Few if any have ever matched the George I knew,

a man who taught me, caught me in my teens to lift me

above my station and make me able to craft my life

for you meet such men but once in a lifetime

and most never do or will but still

I’m glad for his choosing me an apprentice yet to be made

into a man in the last generation before college

trampled underfoot that age-old right of passage 

that once held good that took a boy into 

becoming an artisan of presence 

of character 

of substance.

And here I am now settled in my 73rd year, of 57 years in the making

of an artisan from a thin-limbed lad

having jumped from the high-dive springboard

into a river filled with joy, still a boy

excited by the simple substance of making

that grows as a tree year on year without fail

writing a poem about the deep things 

that matter most.