Sleepers

A sleeper, they used to call it–

four passes with the giant round saw

and you had a crosstie, 7 inches by 9 of white oak–

at two hundred pounds nearly twice my weight

and ready to break finger or toe–

like coffin lids, those leftover slabs,

their new-sawn faces turning gold and brown

as my own in the hot Virginia sun,

drying toward the winter and the woodsaw

and on the day of that chore

I turned over a good, thick one

looking for the balance point

and roused a three-foot copperhead,

gold and brown like the wood,

disdaining the shoe it muscled across,

each rib distinct as a needle stitching leather,

heavy on my foot as a crosstie.

© David Black, 2011

Copperhead; photo by David Mathley