Thoreau’s Carpenter

This one’s for you, Henry David,

I mutter as I toss yet another bent nail into a bucket.

Hammering a straight one into its place

I remember that my American lit prof

Told about excavators of Thoreau’s Walden cabin

Finding dozens of crooked nails.

Self-reliant philosopher Henry David Thoreau

Simplified, simplified, simplified,

And tossed nails he had bent building his cabin

Into the weeds as if they were seeds

That might take root, like his beans, and grow small shacks.

We philosophers, we poets, we would-be carpenters

Bury our nails smiling bravely

While glancing the other way.

Bio:

Gary Jones, a freelance writer and teacher, lives near Sister Bay tending gardens with his wife of many years