Left Behind

I cut a hole in my house today.
I needed to know what that clown did when he built it.
And what’s more fun than taking things apart?

Lovely 50-year old bare wood
where insulation should be.
A sinuous copper pipe with subtle patina
carrying hot water through an unheated attic.
Two short wood beams made useful
by a few nails into pretending to be a rafter.

As though air, and heat, and snow
wouldn’t go
where the building inspector couldn’t see.

Yet there’s the plaster
beautiful thick smooth flat
with sharp square corners.
And the wood casings
cut and stained and polished
even inside the closets
far beyond the value
of the cheap doors and windows they surrounded.

The clown obviously subcontracted
to those craftsmen, long dead now.
The pride in their craft
left behind
to be appreciated.

--WF

p.s. You thought mebbe this was about Tim LaHaye’s
eschatology? Oy, have you got the wrong vampire.