His hand leapt up with every laugh
to shade the gap where three teeth had fallen,
ground loose by forty years of pipe stem.

It startled us, the fact of laughter.
Black Cavendish and coffee had climbed those gums,
settled thickly for years, but this movement was new.
I struggled to keep the saw aligned–he leaned
gently on the bucking end.

In his wood stood a dry-floored house
he'd strapped from saplings and ancient pines.
As he'd ease on a stool of birches, branches
twined and pinned in a wayward fragment
of geodesic bow and grin,
blink up with a laugh at the rain, I wondered
if the rising hand
would pause in air.

July/Aug. '00