Collaboration #23, Guillermo Delgado’s image, Anita Skeen responded

Guillermo Delgado's "Untitled #23", 2011, acrylic on wood, 8'' x 10"

The Gavel Maker

 

 

It started with trees when I was twelve.

And Perry Mason.  When Your Honor smacked

the world into order with one whack

of his mallet, maple on cherry, a final

definitive, That’s that, justice prevailed

and the clever, but not-so-clever-as-he-thought

killer got his comeuppance.  I wanted a part

of that, the last word in the courtroom,

the period at the end of the sentence.

 

I knew how to translate the trees.

I could hear the dark secrets in the heart

of walnut, the contagious laughter

in a pack of Aspen, the sighs

of the white pine.  The buckeye

winked my way when no one

was looking.  Persimmon

puckered up for a kiss.

Time to open conversation.

 

The work takes time, takes patience.

I do it all by hand, no lathe.

I craft three pieces: a head,

a handle, a sound block.

They’re not the same, the gavel

banged by the student council president,

the one opening the New York Stock Exchange.

What gets handed to the Speaker of the House,

hammered when the house is sold at auction.

 

Each gavel speaks from the life

of its tree.  I do not silence it, lock it tight

in a foreign shape.  I release it:

say what you will. I give it a tongue.

Wood always speaks to wood:  guitar

to mandolin, chair leg to roof beam.

Library table to card catalog.

Hear the hum in the courtroom:

prisoner’s dock, jury box, gavel’s knock.

 

1/16/11

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