CHEAP THRILLS (POEM)

         Cheap Thrills

(first draft)

In Guatemala Antigua, I once heard a marimba player

tap hardwood bars of logarithmically sequential lengths

with wooden mallets, launching

rich red-brown tones back into the rain forest

whence the resonant bars had come.

Now, as a scrap of seasoned cedar siding

falls, one split at a time, away from blows

of my hatchet, each new piece of kindling

pings its own small gong

against the stone hearth, again teaching my ear

how the marimba must have been invented.

As you see, not much going on here:

just the clutter of my stuff:

a folding oak camp table

littered with past-due bills,

clean socks, egg cartons,

toothbrush, a book of erotic writing

by women. Underneath,

a thousand dollars worth

of work boots: soles charred fighting

wildfires of the summer of  2002, toes scuffed

(the left more than the right) from years of

earning my living as a journeyman carpenter,

shoe-pacs with lugged rubber soles worn smooth

by walking in crusted snow like this, here, that now

darkens, blue to indigo, as this February evening

drapes itself around the shoulders of my cabin.                                            

                                   

                                             Dean Metcalf

                                                      Jan-Feb 2004