Birch knots catch in the saw blade. The belts, 
in a high-pitched squeal, split off & the black teeth
of the gear box lose their song, bringing the blade 

to rest. The foreman’s halting whistle pipes loud 
enough to stir birds from trees marked orange 
for felling. My father—lungs choked with sawdust—

follows the mill hands to the parking lot. Men huddle
around the hood of a truck packing cigarettes 
against their palms, lighters open & close, the clank 

of metal against metal. For years, I’ve been awakened 
by the sound of steel defeating wood. I used to think I knew 
what a cut could teach us: to dissolve, as in, 

the kerosene my father used to cut through the machine 
oil caked on his hands, one muddying the other; 
to detach, as in: severing the wings from the body 

of a pheasant— the tendons, white gristle, the tangled 
sinews, meat from its breast enough to fill three mouths;
to divide, as in, the way the eyes edit the dead 

from photographs, the way the mind parts here 
from here no longer. Soon, he will stand at the doorway 
unrolling sawdust from his shirtsleeves, knocking 

a week’s worth of wood chips from his boots & my mother, 
familiar with the grit that camps in all he owns, stands
in the dull light of the kitchen, shaving slivers of an apple 

over the sink. He’ll see this first, slip the knife from her hands, 
& explain to her slowly the importance of cutting 
away from the body; I know now what a cut can teach us, 

to trim: as in, my father sitting on the corner of the bed, 
my mother kneeling before him, cutting his fingernails 
short enough to bleed, pulling splinters 

from the pads of his fingers. Tweezers, cotton balls, iodine 
& my father, quiet, watches my mother press metal
to his hands.  Still, he doesn’t flinch.

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