Sound Without Hammer and Anvil is Loss
Sound Without Hammer and Anvil is Loss
Sound Without Hammer and Anvil is Loss
by Hannah Chapple
Raised in the cut-dust of New York maple, knotty pine,the whet scrapeechoes dull like stone on stone,a cutting edge ground soft with handsshaped like your hands.Learn the word cleave, learn etch,the place steel swallows grain.
Danger follows the cold, where skinchimes against the open air like shattering, achesfor the wood-burning stove, fears the sound of a new blade wearing old.
The workbench edges bowto cup the high hip grooves of men—collect their leanings, carve toward shape, etch where they began.
Blanks spin into becoming, grow legs. Love the way the grain guides fingers,speaks beneath hands. Cutuntil its voice becomes your voice.
Utter “finished” into the colddeparture. Dispossess the thumbprints hiddenin each dark joining. End with cleave,begin with grain again.
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Featured in our November 2022 issue, "Groove"