BUILDING THE NEW ROOM

At first, the floor-boards—pitted, 

slopped with paint, seemed worthless.

We pried them out, and found,

beneath the joists, stumps of old 

trees, hatchet-chopped and silvery

with age. Ruddy bark adhered 

to the roots. We had no choice but 

torque shoulders and knees 

into the crawl-space, to muster 

saws, shovels, crow-bars … to dig 

them out was sweaty, dirty work 

in sand the neighbor's cat claimed 

for his own. Litany of vapor seals

and fiberglass, the squeal of screw 

in ply.... when we planed the shabby

boards, hardened gobs of white 

lead, wrinkled paint florets, 

enduring layers of varnish flew 

off in a shower of acrid dust, 

leaving some dimpled planks 

clear—others, traced with flourishes 

of a green stain that now in 

the new-laid floor sings 

the lineage of reclaimed wood.

Kathryn Weld is Professor of Mathematics at Manhattan College. A finalist for the Gearhardt Poetry prize and the Marica and Jan Vilcek Prize for Poetry, her poems have appeared in journals such as Midwest Review, Southeast Literary Review, and Bellevue Literary Review.