The Old Ways

It is the hard way.
The slow way.
The way of sweat and wounds.
An ax to a tree.
A plane to the wood.
Hand drilled into the grain.
A hatchet to carve the pegs.
Weight too heavy for a man to bear,
Trial and error,
until finally, a fit.
A pounding, slow and steady.

Your muscles ache.
Your flesh is cut and splinters dig deep.
The slow way.
The old way.
Other ways work.
There are shortcuts galore.
but none last like this,
far past your lifetime, and two more.

And so you do the work.
The hard way,
Proven and true.
Post and beam with wood fresh and dried, and
smelling of eternity.

About this poem.

About the old ways of building things. About the rebuilding of the soul. The old ways matter because they last.

Tom