From Fractal Fields by Bob Howse

Author:Bob Howse [Howse, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POETRY / Canadian / General, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / General, Poetry by individual poets, Modern and contemporary poetry (c 1900 onwards), Narrative theme: Sense of place, Nova Scotia
ISBN: 9780995287891
Publisher: Nummist Media
Published: 2022-12-21T00:00:00+00:00

My Father’s Squares

I set my father’s squares

Up on the bookcase, high,

To watch me unawares,

To watch me as I try.

Wise and well-used, his tools

Tell a life of craft; their jewels

Are blades of steel weathered smooth

By all his years, his works, his toils,

Brass facings, pins, and neat trefoils,

Palm-polished rosewood handles

Too good for my scant skills to use,

So let them perch there as a muse

And be a fine reminder of my Dad

And of how things should be tried

And done: with care and honesty

And finally with precision won.

··

In writing, as in building,

You always owe folks that,

Not just the flash and gleam

Of smooth surface and heartstrings.

Tenoned post and mortised beam

Must come first to anchor things.

··

You need a good, strong joint

To hold it all together,

And a true, measured cut

On a line set to a square,

A planted, plumb foundation,

A base that will bear

An argument grounded

In truths discovered there

And in the nature of what is.

··

Dad knew nothing of Pythagoras,

Whose theorem was a stranger too,

But he could make his corners true

By laying out a triangle whose sides

Were multiples of three, four, five.

Hypotenuse was foreign speech to him,

But geometry was, in his rough hands,

An art and language very much alive,

Still there in his antique try squares,

Watching from a bookcase as I strive.

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