An Unanticipated Development

So, I have actually found myself flipping back through a variety of blogs for some instruction on the point of how to begin. Most launch immediately into discussion as though,  some afternoon,  an idea dawned so fascinating that it demanded a blog. This will be a more gradual unfolding, and I should begin with introductions.  

I am, of late, a professional woodworker. I work with hand tools, and mostly old tools. I make things with saws and chisels and planes. This is a small way of introducing something that is, in small ways, astonishing. 

Billy Collins writes about splitting wood:

"the darkness inside the tree they shared

now instantly exposed to the blunt

light of this clear November day,

all the inner twisting of the grain

that held them blindly

in their augmentation and contortion

now rushed into this brightness

as if by a shutter

that, once opened, can never be closed."    

And so, today, I thought of the pine planks in the lumberyard, each torn from the wet darkness of the tree, and with a fragment of that exact darkness inside of them.