Mitered Angles

by Lynne Mcfarland

Saturday morning, Diocesan Convention, St. George's:
An intricate design, compound angles at each joint,
A piece of work. Of course, the devil's in the details.
So the woodworker snaps on his headgear, his purple
Safety shield, and shows us how he presets blades and routers,
Recalculates the angles, backwards (can you believe),
To control the mitered cuts by tool guides, fences, templates --
Tiresome work, but prudent when the angles are compound,
And have to join precisely for the project, when it's done,
To speak of craft so fine it seems almost invisible.
Seamlessly the precut pieces slide into each other,
To make a thing seated in the world just so; the space
Around it bends and turns, it has such gravitas.

But, I am thinking: It doesn't have the presence of, say,
Bedrock, which, outcropped on a hill, is sculpted by the wind,
Or of the clearing lit by Words once spoken in its field.
Of a church shaped less by things manmade than things revealed.

[COVENANT, Number 20, April 2005]

Lynne Mcfarland is a member of St Augustine Chapel, Nashville, TN, and an advanced practice psychiatric nurse