Parallax door jamb

This slat is the pale painted record,

how angels lengthened their bones -

pencil-mark measures drawn across,

layered like strata in a

loving geology:

Nostalgia’s sweet allegretto,

giggling wiggly backs pressed gently flat

squirming, piping impatient to view

the gauge scratched above their heads

like a halo drawn in lead.

In four decades - give or take-

as my bleary liver burns blue

and nurses prod my parts and

map my humors using Lite-Brite pegs

the tired muscles of my heart

will clutch with their old strength

at the vision

of that inscribed length of pine,

from a home long gone from view,

sacred to my soul as a plank

from the Golgothic cross.