洞月亮 Cave Moon Press December 2017

FEATURED POET: Gerry McFarland worked in healthcare for thirty years with drafts of poems folded up in his pocket. In 2011, he graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the Rainier Writer’s Workshop. His poetry has appeared in Crab Creek Review, Bayou, Switched-on-Gutenberg, Zyzzyva, Contemporary American Voices, Cider Press Review, Salt Hill Journal, and, most recently, War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, among many other publications. He is currently working on a memoir. He and his wife, Allegra, an avid gardener, live and create in their home on the Olympic Peninsula.


THE MAKING
               for Tim

Closed on a hammer his hands
Are like hills,
Swollen places
On the earth;
Palms open,
Become
Rough plains, each line

A minute stream bed circling
Discolored
Calluses. At evening
Seated
Under kitchen light, elbows
On his knees palms open

As a stubble field,
He picks at scabs,
Fingers newly blistered faults
In a ritual of reparation
To the God of the Unfinished.

Tomorrow his hands will make a house.
Mute instruments
Will build from air
The fact of wood,

Join opposing forests. There must be

A new word for such making.
In morning light, on the hill,
Pine studs will frame the house
Of the new word,
The molten sun

Light the house’s bones.
The hands
Will start things off.
Blocks will hold promise
And the smells of pine,

Sawdust, earth, and rain will be new.

WRITE YOUR POEM:
"...To the God of the Unfinished..."
Poems put a space between the certain and uncertain...
Maybe that is even a poet's role.  To witness the truth in ambiguity and throw off the didactic.

The trick is that you can use the form for either priority.  No worries.  In your next poem ask if your punchline is pointing to the certain or uncertain.  Either way, 
write a solstice poem to a child and light a candle.  Let them decide.