"Abundance"
For the Woodcut Artist Mary Azarian
Worcester. A woman leans over a block of beechwood,
fingers wrapped around the walnut handle of a gouge.
Pole beans. Tipped colander. Gourd. Wood curls
like butter on the chisel as she tunnels,
makes space for white.
Armenia. A boy discovers a vole dead in the snow.
It is missing one leg. His father tells him
it has been driven from the burrow by hungry brothers.
The ground is frozen and will not yield
for burial.
In the field, the woman's daughter lays nettle
to stop the leaf miners, gathers what lettuce
the deer have left.
The boy leaves Geben on foot, boards a train
in Zeitun. He writes a letter to his father.
Do not worry, he writes. It is no longer winter.
The woman dips the brayer in a shallow bowl
of ink, rolls a swath of black over lines that rise
like train tracks above the carved hollows.
In Geben, no one picks up the post.
The A for Abundance smears
at first press of cotton linter.
© 2007 Laura Ring
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