"if I was a gate" (by Leslie Greentree)
"if I was a gate" (by Leslie Greentree)
Original Text
Leslie Greentree, go-go dancing for Elvis (Calgary: Frontenac House, 2003).
This
poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from a volume on the 2004 Canadian Shortlist).
1I thought I loved the cordless screwdriver
2but this is something else altogether
3I hold my shiny new electric drill
4listen to its high-pitched whine
5it is fairly leaping in my hand
6tingling through my arm my shoulder
7waking all my bones
8I am a surgeon
9drilling tidy holes
10precise and perfect
11I blow off the dust
12step back to admire my handiwork
13brandish my shrieking drill
14step in again
15you have to make small notches first
16you see, in the cupboard doors
17I could pull out
18my old battered hammer
19use brute force
20I prefer to take the bit in hand
21push it gently into the soft wood
22make the small circular motions
23that create the slot it
24will slide into naturally
25otherwise it jumps around
26eager but awkward
27until you guide it home
28there is that small moment as the drill bit
29pauses seeks slips in
30a second’s resistance before it sinks
31I feel the wood yield under my
32steady singing pressure
33the bit bores deeper and deeper
34until with a start I feel it
35I am through
36now this is power
37like when a lover leaves and
38your fear turns into the sudden
39realization that you can do it for yourself
40just as well or better
41and you don’t have to listen to the same
42Monty Python story
43over and over and over
44through the course of a long
45beery evening either
46Darryl showed me what to do in Totem
47it felt heavy and alien in my hands
48I wanted to throw myself at his feet
49beg him to come home with me
50drill my first hole
51now I’m laughing aloud
52fiercely proud of the naked apertures
53racing across my kitchen
54like a banner
55now I’m looking around my house
56wondering what else I can plunge this into
57I didn’t put music on
58wanting nothing to interfere with the
59insouciant shrieking seduction of my electric drill
60the song fragment that loops through my mind:
61if I was a gate I’d be swinging
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011