"Where the city's ceaseless crowd moves on, the live-long day, Withdrawn, I join a group of children watching – I pause aside with them. By the curb, toward the edge of the flagging, A knife-grinder works at his wheel, sharpening a great knife;" Whitman, "Sparkles from the Wheel"








Cooperage

3.

For blocks the sweet and hot smell of the milled pines
under the sun, away from the shelter of the overhang
it dries and fills the air with the sweet smell for blocks
as the men who labor over their saws and splits for staves
rest under shade for a smoke and peak to the cool inside.