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The Dao of Woodworking

from The Dao of Woodworking by Charles Dalton Telschow

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lyrics

At the age of 11, I walked into Mr. Dunham’s wood shop class, just ready to build a stool. 

We were learning the concept of an assembly line. 22 people at 22 stations each doing one thing, and in the end you have 22 stools. 

I was in charge of the table saw. 

I made the initial width cuts on the boards, I was the first stop on a long line of learning. 

I was just glad to be a part of something. 

I still ate my lunch alone in the cafeteria but here, I was a link in a chain, a gear in the clock, just as meaningful as all the others

FUCK YEAH I WAS INCLUDED!

As I repeated my tedious process of pushing the boards into the spinning teeth, I watched the saw blade glide through the grain, and I just really enjoyed that. 

I couldn't see what these boards were becoming, I just had to have faith that the other gears would turn as well. So I sent them off to be sanded and rounded and polished and assembled

no evidence they had once held birds and leaves in their fingertips. Or the initials of lovers in their sides

Once we were finished, the stools were all handed out, all identical, each with traces of 6 graders gluing skills oozing out the pegs, 

I gave mine to my adoptive mother for Mother's Day that year. 

We haven't talked since that thanksgiving I didn't come home. 

I like to think she still has it. 

Maybe sometimes she takes it out, stares at the grain in the wood, notices the similar ones in her hands, and how they both look like life now, sighs, and puts it back in the closet where she keeps things like that. 

Maybe she threw it out. 

But I know my fingerprint is just like a woodgrain, and we 

are just a forest of things 

not yet washed away 
in the storm

credits

from The Dao of Woodworking, released July 6, 2017

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Charles Dalton Telschow Denver, Colorado

Charles Dalton Telschow is a 23 year old Denver poet and musician. He has competed in the city poetry circuit for several years, traveled to Congress to perform poetry, and was formerly in a metal band. He now finds refuge in writing, playing guitar, and singing. ... more

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