Tell a cooper who hammers barrels,
a nail can part ways with its head
and bed its body aslant in the grain.
At a cooper’s store,
barrels go smudged with caulk.
A watering cooper cuts paste
from his hands with a jerry-built
scouring tool.
Metal wedged hard in the gaps of the grain,
metal hooked out of sawdust heaps.
A freshened cooper,
drunk head in a bucket of water,
flanked by his aproned assistants.
Nails primed between
the nails of forefinger and thumb,
cooper squats in the dreary store,
caulk masking cracks of his hands;
brown boots are scuffling in a scatter
of his own discarded nail-heads.
-2003
