The Joy of Architecture

The pine deck on our house had rotted through.
Thirty years of wild mountain weather
Drenched, froze, thawed, dried, and scored the grain like leather.
Sun and water worked themselves down to
The core to do what sun and water do.
“Look,” said Duane. The wood split like a feather
In his hammer’s claw. So it wasn’t whether
This summer worked. It was overdue.
The yard’s now a construction site, litter
Of planks, beams, nails, screws, bolts, dust everywhere.
And there, between a dangling end of rope
And dumpster-bound board . . . how can I be bitter? . . . 
A spider’s architecture on the air.
I have to laugh. Now that’s what I call hope.

David J. Rothman is a widely published poet and writer living in Crested butte, Colorado. His most recent volume of poems, My Brother’s Keeper, is a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”