Ars Poetica

In your uncle’s workshop by Havana Bay,

Your pudgy hands, stubby fingers turning

Lithe with wood, cloth, springs, bone, coir,

Your life a reverence to sawdust and burl

As you labored each day in the heat and the light,

Standing on a plank jacked up by bricks,

A ring of tools cuffed to your small wrist,

Your palms and soles callused to stone

As you fluted gadroons, flounced damask,

Beat down unruly tacks to martial rivets.

                                                        O padre mío,

I learned to craft words watching you sew

With the finest thread and not leave a trace—

To be patient, steadfast, reverent in my work.

Don’t dawdle, don’t waste, you’d say, but save

What you can’t use today for another day:

A scrap of cloth, a stray idea, an orphan verse.

gazed in wonder as you made the bucksaw

Sway like a violin’s bow against strident wood,

How you ironed wrinkled linen to vellum,

Or straightened the crookedest of nails

Because anything can be fixed. Praise you,

Papá, my poet of hammer, needle, and shears.