Ode to the Gain

gain — a bevel cut into plank ends in traditional lapstrake boat construction that allows otherwise lapped planks to lay flush at stem and transom. There’s the paring chisel’s purpose in the steamed cedar strake, its long warp laid strong against the bench, whose pocked surface is the book of what has already been made, or marred in learning’s wake —& clamped now in the jaws one is waiting for its match, for the chisel to elaborate the pencil’s scribed hypothesis, under which lies another path,& through a tilting eye the curving bevel’s made, the chisel rolling back tight scrolls of thinnest grain & what bright sleeves begin to fleece the floor; there is a lack given to the wood, some short song cut loose from the lignin’s name, that a longer & more buoyant melody be made.