The sawmill cut into the day,
Its work a grinding wooden noise;
Logs screamed into halves,                 
Into log families.

Old Cajo and his sons let us hang around,
The labouring sounds pig-squealing into our heads.
We bagged the chopped stick like giant chips,
We swept the floor’s mess of yellow snow.

The machine’s teeth were like a shark’s;
A disc’s serrated threat, a metal grin.
Biting into the bark, it spat pine dust.

We loaded the lorry
And took to the estates, the lonely homes;

 

The Cajo sons safe inside the cab,
While we sat on a mountain
Of blocks and bags:

Moving above the speeding cars.

Peter Thabit Jones © 2016

Published in THE COLD COLD CORNER, 1995