Third Place Winner, February 2005 InterBoard Poetry Competition

Poetry

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Poetry

InterBoard Poetry Competition

Third Place Winner, February 2005

THE WHEELWRIGHT’S APOTHEOSIS
William Neumire
(The Writer’s Block)

I am a wheelwright, in the evening I take in the broken:
spokeless, warped, splintered, the wheels roll in,
neighbors and friends drop them off
with faces like those who’ve lost god. Who am I?
I say to myself in the dust of my tools.
I respoke the missing, rub smooth the angled,
untwist the warped, remake the utterly ruined.
I work nights. My lunch comes when the sky is dark
and birdless. In the morning I give back
what I have done to smiles and relief;
more work can be done. I will eat today
because of wheels. I will travel and read and love
and believe in god today, because of smaller gods.